Foreign ministers of Quad countries Australia, India, Japan, and the US will meet in here on January 21, a day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th US President, making it one of the first foreign policy acts of the new administration, a media report said Friday.
Trump will be sworn in for a second term on Monday.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will be among those representing their respective countries in the presidential inauguration.
The Quad ministerial meeting is aimed at showing that US commitment to Indo-Pacific would not shift under new leadership, according to Politico which cites a source with knowledge of the issue.
This is anticipated to be the first major contact and meeting of the new government with foreign nations' leaders.
Marco Rubio would have been confirmed by Congress to be the new US Secretary of State by then. He is going to be sworn in on Monday evening. By that time, this is probably going to be Rubio's very first foreign policy meeting after swearing-in.
The Quad foreign ministers meeting is a good sign and shows continuity," Dhruva Jaishankar, executive director of ORF America, said in an interview with PTI.
It resumed under Trump during his first term. That, I think is a good sign, but it's also a sign that maybe this is an America that knows that it is in a much more competitive landscape. And this notion we had back in the 1990s and early 2000s that they can take the rest of the world for granted is no longer there, he said.
Read also| Trump Takes Credit for Gaza Ceasefire Deal, Citing 'Historic Victory'