Quad summit in Delaware, not India on Sept 21; PM Modi to attend

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to join the leaders of the US, Japan and Australia at the Quad summit in the US later this month as the influential grouping is likely to deliberate on pressing global challenges including the situation in Ukraine.

The summit is likely to take place on September 21 in US President Joe Biden's hometown of Wilmington in Delaware, people familiar with the matter said.

There is no official announcement yet on the date and venue of the high-profile summit. It was India's turn to host the Quad summit this year. However, the leaders of the grouping decided to hold the summit at a venue convenient to all in view of constraints of a tight calendar.

As per the new plan, India is expected to host the Quad summit next year.

Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida are among the world leaders who are travelling to the US to attend the UN's Summit of the Future in New York on September 22 and 23.

The Quad summit is likely to focus on boosting cooperation among the member nations in the Indo-Pacific besides delving into various key challenges facing the globe including the conflict in Ukraine.

In July, the foreign ministers of the Quad member nations held wide-ranging talks in Tokyo with a focus on boosting overall cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.

In a loud and clear message to China, the Quad foreign ministerial meeting reaffirmed the grouping's steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and resolved to work towards a region where no country dominates others and each state is free from "coercion" in all its forms.

The foreign ministers also announced a plan to expand its ambitious Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) programme to the Indian Ocean region that would facilitate monitoring the strategic waters.

In New York, Prime Minister Modi is also set to address an Indian community event besides holding talks with a number of world leaders on the sidelines of the UN summit, the people cited above said.

The Summit of the Future will bring leaders from various countries to forge a new international consensus on how to deliver a "better present and safeguard the future", according to the UN.

Effective global cooperation is increasingly critical to our survival but difficult to achieve in an atmosphere of mistrust, using outdated structures that no longer reflect today's political and economic realities, the UN said.

The Summit of the Future is a chance to get back on track, it said.