Washington, July 2: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the Quad ministerial meeting on Tuesday was very productive and will strengthen stability in the Indo-Pacific region. After the meeting, he posted on X that they “discussed how to make Quad more focused and impactful on contemporary opportunities and challenges”.

It was “very productive” and “will strengthen strategic stability in the Indo-Pacific and keep it free and open,” he wrote about the meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Foreign Ministers Penny Wong of Australia and Takeshi Iwaya of Japan, representing the major democracies in the region. Before the meeting, he said, “India has every right to defend its people against terrorism, and we will exercise that right. We expect our Quad partners to understand and appreciate that”.

Rubio, who is hosting the meeting, said, “There are many global problems, but also problems that we face in our respective countries that can be solved by us cooperating together”. He said that he has met Jaishankar “a number of times now in just six months on the job”. “I was just telling how much he travels. I follow the news, and every time I see (he is) somewhere else in the world. So he's been very busy,” he said.

Rubio said the other Quad nations “are very important strategic partners and allies of the United States, and together, we have a lot of shared priorities, a lot of things we care about in the world”. The Quad is not only about security but also about economic development, he said. He said that he had “personally been very focused on diversifying the global supply chain of critical minerals, not just access to the raw material, but also access to the ability to process and refine it to usable material”.

“Having a diverse and reliable global supply chain of these is just one example of many that we can focus on and build upon and achieve some real progress on,” he said. “So that's the hope for this partnership”. Rubio said a challenge was to turn meetings “where we talk about ideas and concepts into a vehicle for action, into a vehicle for actually being able to take concrete actions”.

“The next step in this great partnership is to actually begin to see concrete actions and steps being taken in conjunction with one another, in coordination with one another, in partnership with one another for the benefit of our respective countries, and ultimately of many other countries in the world,” he said. “There are many countries that are going to benefit from this partnership, even though they're not members of it,” he added.

(IANS)

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