Quad members will also discuss threats to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. (File)
Melbourne:
Climate change, COVID-19 and China’s “compulsion” in the Indo-Pacific will be at the top of the agenda when foreign ministers from the Quad – an informal grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States – meet in Melbourne on Friday , but the discussions will also develop into an escalating crisis between the West and Russia over Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Australia this week as Washington grapples with a dangerous standoff with Moscow, which has gathered some 100,000 troops near the border with Ukraine and has fueled Western fears of invasion. Russia denies having such plans.
The Biden administration wants to show the world that its long-term strategic focus remains on Asia-Pacific and that a major foreign policy crisis in one part of the world will not distract it from key priorities.
At the start of her bilateral meeting with Blinken, Australian Foreign Secretary Marise Payne said that in addition to cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, climate change and COVID-19-related issues, the two top diplomats will also talk about China, North Korea and Ukraine .
“More than one authoritarian regime presents itself as a challenge in the current global climate. North Korea, China too and they will be part of our discussions today. We wholeheartedly support the US leadership on these challenges,” she said.
“We are definitely going to talk today about the threats to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she added.
Britain said the “most dangerous moment” in the West’s standoff with Moscow seemed imminent as Russia held military exercises in Belarus and the Black Sea after building up its troops near Ukraine.
On Thursday, Blinken said Washington was working “24/7” on the crisis in Ukraine, but reaffirmed that the US is targeting the Indo-Pacific — a region he believes would play an important role in shaping much of the of the 21st century. “It is important that we are present, that we are involved, that we are leading in this region,” he said.
Both Blinken and Payne said a key element of the Quad discussion will focus on creating a regional environment free of “coercion,” a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing’s expansive economic and military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. .
The Quad’s cooperation in the region’s Covid response has been “the most critical,” Payne told parliament, with cyber and maritime security, infrastructure, climate action and disaster relief – especially after the recent volcanic eruption in Tonga – also in focus. .
Speaking to reporters on the plane bound for Melbourne, Blinken described the Quad as a “powerful mechanism” to deliver vaccines worldwide and to push back against “aggression and coercion” in the Indo-Pacific, without mentioning China.
Ministers will work to advance those goals, but are unlikely to announce new commitments, and that will wait until a May summit of Quad leaders in Japan that President Joe Biden plans to attend.
Blinken’s journey comes days after China and Russia declared a borderless strategic partnership last week, their most detailed and assertive statement to work together — and against the United States — to build a new international order based on their own. interpretations of human rights and democracy .
Ties between the US and China are at their lowest point in decades as the world’s two largest economies disagree on issues ranging from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea and China’s treatment of ethnic Muslims.
Biden told Asian leaders in October that the United States would begin talks on a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. But few details have emerged, and his administration has been reluctant to provide the greater market access Asian countries desire, as it poses a threat to US jobs.
Critics say the lack of US economic involvement is a major weakness in Biden’s approach to the region, where China remains the main trading partner for many of the Indo-Pacific countries.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
