President Joe Biden will visit Sydney next month for the first meeting of Quad leaders on Australian soil.
The president will join Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to address regional security issues, ABC News reports.
The Sydney Opera House will provide the venue for the historic summit on May 24 which will also be the first time Biden has visited Australia as U.S. president.
The Quad, formally titled Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), is a diplomatic partnership aiming to promote stability, resilience, and co-prosperity at a time of increasing fracture in the Indo/Pacific region driven by China’s growing trade, diplomatic and military ambitions, as Breitbart News reported.
Australia and Japan have already signed a reciprocal access agreement that has been under negotiation for six years and codifies rules for hosting visiting troops to each other’s country for training and operations.
That agreement comes after recent calls for the creation of a regional NATO-type defence alliance across the South Pacific between like-minded nations.
Australia’s left-wing leader is looking forward to hosting his visitors and used social media to make the announcement:
Next month’s meeting will be the fourth Quad summit and the third held in person with the most recent in-person meeting hosted by Japan’s capital Tokyo last year.
In a joint statement seen by ABC News, the leaders said they strongly supported settling disputes “without resorting to threat or use of force, any unilateral attempt to change the status quo.”
The leaders said the countries supported democratic values, territorial integrity, and freedom of navigation, to ensure peace and prosperity in the region.
“We reaffirm our resolve to uphold the international rules-based order where countries are free from all forms of military, economic and political coercion,” the statement read.
File/Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stands with newly appointed Foreign Minister Penny Wong, at the door of their plane on May 23, 2022 in Canberra, Australia. Albanese headed to Japan to attend the Quad Leaders’ meeting in Tokyo. (David Gray/Getty)
U.S. President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (L) hold a meeting during the Quad Leaders Summit at Kantei in Tokyo on May 24, 2022. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The Quad group was formed in the mid-2000s to bolster economic and security relations between the four democracies as a check on Communist China’s rise.
It was rebooted under the presidency of Donald Trump a decade later and elevated to a regular leader-level gathering during Biden’s tenure.
Biden will also attend a summit of the leaders of the Group of Seven advanced democracies in Hiroshima, Japan, on May 19-21 on his way Down Under.
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