Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday had a bilateral meeting with his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison in Washington DC, where both leaders arrived to take part in the first in-person meeting of the Quad.
Modi’s meeting with Morrison was the first between the two leaders after Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a trilateral security alliance, AUKUS, primarily to counter the hegemonic aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region.
The two Prime Ministers discussed “regional and global developments as well as ongoing bilateral cooperation in areas like dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, trade, defence, clean energy and others, according to Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Modi and Morrison will join Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the United States President Joe Biden for the Quad summit at the White House on Friday.
The launch of the AUKUS cast a shadow over the Quad, which too was launched by the US, India, Japan and Australia as a coalition of the democratic nations to counter China.
New Delhi, however, clarified that the Quad, unlike the AUKUS, was not a security alliance.
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