Quartet summit canceled after Joe Biden cancels his trip to Australia | Asia Pacific

Anthony Albanese has confirmed that the Sydney quartet meeting will not go ahead, after US President Joe Biden pulled out of his visit to Australia to deal with domestic issues.

Early Wednesday morning, Albanese was still hopeful the meeting with the leaders of India and Japan would go ahead with a high-ranking representative from the United States, but hours later he confirmed the event had stalled.

Instead, the four nations are expected to hold a side meeting at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend, with the four leaders still attending.

While the Japan summit meeting has not yet taken place, Albanese said it was “appropriate that we talk.”

“The Quartet is an important body and we want to make sure that happens at the leadership level and we will have that discussion over the weekend,” he said.

Biden’s visit to Australia, with a historic stopover to Papua New Guinea confirmed in recent weeks, had long been expected and would have included an address to Parliament.

Instead, Albanese will hold a one-on-one meeting with Biden in Japan, and he has been invited to the United States later this year for a state visit.

It is not known when Biden will be able to reschedule his trip to Australia.

The delay, due to hostile negotiations with the intensifying US Republican Congress over the government’s debt ceiling, comes at a sensitive time in the US’s dealings with the Pacific region.

The visit was supposed to help cement renewed US interest in the Indo-Pacific region and help assuage regional concerns about the Oaks Agreement.

In a radio interview that talked about the postponement, which came just hours after the visit was confirmed, Albanese stressed Biden’s commitment to the quadruple arrangement.

“President Biden stressed the importance of the Quartet,” he said.

He was very disappointed with some of the actions of some members of the US Congress and Senate. We’ve long been past the time opposition parties tried to disrupt supplies in Australia, you may remember, I’m old enough to remember 1975. Since then, of course, we haven’t had those supply issues. But that is what you have in the United States at the moment.

“And it’s clear that the president’s domestic priority, understandably, is to play a role in resolving these issues.”

Officially, the “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue” was formed between the United States, Japan, India and Australia during the international response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which formally met for the first time in 2007.

They were disbanded in 2008, although the date of Quad 1.0 remains in dispute, with some Blame the Australian government Under Kevin Rudd for their retreat in an attempt not to upset China, while others point to US approach goes slowly for a break.

It was revived at the 2017 ASEAN Summit at the ministerial level, while Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister and Donald Trump was President of the United States. Other meetings have taken place between the four countries, including among defense personnel, and leaders’ summits have been held since 2021.

The Quartet was instrumental in creating the concept of the “Indo-Pacific”, rather than the Asia-Pacific region, referring to the relations between nations between the Indian and Pacific oceans.