Tokyo – President Biden, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia are meeting today for the second in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit. at Kantei in Tokyo, Japan.
Quad Leaders will announce the opening of applications for the Quad Fellowship, which will sponsor 100 American, Australian, Indian, and Japanese students to study in the United States each year for graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
Quad leaders will participate in a working lunch at Kantei in Tokyo. Bilateral meetings are next on the schedule, with President Biden meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
A Senior Administration Official told reporters that the Quad leaders will welcome a major initiative on maritime domain awareness, to be called the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). IPMDA will transform the ability of partners in the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region to fully monitor the waters on their shores and, in turn, to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific. “Quad partners will cooperate to help deliver this kind of capability across the region. And I think that, you know, we expect that this will integrate three critical regions — as I said, the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean region — in the Indo-Pacific. And this will allow the tracking of dark shipping and other tactical-level activities, such as rendezvous at sea, as well as improves partners’ ability to respond to climate and humanitarian events, and to protect their fisheries, which are vital to so many Indo-Pacific economies,” said the official. This capability will provide the tools needed to better maintain their sovereignty, combat illegal fishing, and better enable rescue at sea and other humanitarian activities.
The official said there will be some announcements with regard to COVID-19 boosters and pediatric doses for countries in the greatest need, including in the Indo-Pacific. Quad leaders are also expected to announce a range of initiatives in the climate space, critical technologies, and cyber.
