India is preparing to hold the QUAD with the US, Australia and Japan in October amid escalations along the Line of Actual Control with China. A ministerial meet could likely happen as early as October even as India and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said,”we look forward to holding quad meet later this year and details are being worked out”.
Last year on the sidelines of sidelines United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. the QUAD foreign ministers had met. According to WION news, “details are still being worked out” but “strong intent is to hold something in the coming months. Likely to be after Indian parliament session though so not Sept.”
Earlier this month, US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said a quad ministerial meet is being planned to take place in Delhi.
Speaking at U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, Biegun said, “There’s going to be a meeting of the Quad, a ministerial meeting with the Quad this fall in Delhi – that’s the intention anyway – in person.”
Nothing gives China more worry than the QUAD and the communist governed nation is highly suspicious of this group of nations coming together to discuss the geopolitical situation in the Indian Ocean Region and the Pacific.
On China viewing the QUAD with suspicion, Biegun said,” I don’t think responding to the threat of China in and of itself or any potential challenge from China in and of itself would be enough of a driver. It also has to have a positive agenda.”
India’s first Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat called the QUAD a “good arrangement” that can ensure freedom of navigation at the high seas. Gen Rawat said, “Largest number of ships and oil reserves and oil requirements pass through this area. So we want the quad to become a system to ensure freedom of navigation”.
Speaking at USISPF or US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, Rawat said, “We are very keen to ensure that complete freedom of navigations on the seas and the airspace above. As far as the Quad is concerned, we feel it’s a good arrangement that will ensure that the Indian Ocean region and all other oceans around” has “complete freedom of navigation” and without taking the name of China explained, “without fear of any other nation, singularly trying to dominate the ocean.”
When it comes to the South China Sea, China has laid claim on territories on the majority of the international water based on its nine-dash line which is a Chinese govt backed construct and it has been rejected by an arbitral tribunal constituted under the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea. China, however, did not comply with this arbitral tribunal and rejected it.