Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during the AFR Business Summit in Sydney on 7 March 2023.
Brent Lewin | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday said the Quad summit would not take place in Sydney next week without US President Joe Biden, who postponed his trip to Australia due to debt ceiling negotiations in Washington. .
Albanese said the leaders of Australia, the United States, India and Japan will meet at the G7 in Japan later this week, after Biden canceled a trip to Sydney on the second leg of an upcoming tour of Asia, which also includes a visit to Papua New Guinea.
“The Quad leaders’ meeting won’t be in Sydney next week. We will, though, have that discussion among the Quad leaders in Japan,” Albanese told a news conference.
Albanese said a bilateral program in Sydney with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could still go ahead next week.
Albanese did not comment on whether Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida would still visit Sydney next week.
The Quad is an informal group that promotes an open Indo-Pacific. Beijing sees this as an attempt to push back its growing influence in the region.
Richard Maude, senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the cancellation of Biden’s visit to Papua New Guinea, the first visit by a US president to an independent Pacific island nation, could reverse Washington’s battle for influence with Beijing in the region.
Maude, the former director of Australian intelligence, said in a panel discussion on the issue: Quad on Wednesday.
India and Australia are not part of the G7 group of seven wealthy nations – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – but have been invited to the summit in Japan.
