Secretary of State Marco Rubio With Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Japanese Foreign Minister Motegi[...]

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: Colleagues, good morning, and it's a great pleasure to welcome you all to New Delhi for this meeting of the Quad foreign ministers. Meeting for the third time in less than 18 months, we will be discussing and deciding our shared activities. Obviously that will take into account the many challenges and opportunities in the world.

Our focus will clearly be on the Indo-Pacific, which is the specific (inaudible) of the Quad. At the global level, we have to address issues like supply chain resilience, connectivity choke points, manufacturing and resource concentrations, and gaps in critical infrastructure. Each one of them offers a new argument for more partnerships, stronger growth, and realizing the promise of technologies. The Indo-Pacific has, in addition, its own particular concerns. This will require enhancing strategic confidence, ensuring maritime security, promoting economic choices, and fostering a deeper collaborative ethos. And that is best done by promoting trusted and transparent partnerships.

Over the past several months, our officials have advanced collaboration across key Quad priorities, including maritime security, critical technologies, economic resilience, and HADR. We have seen encouraging progress on many initiatives. As maritime democracies, pluralistic societies, and market economies, we share a responsibility towards a free and open Indo-Pacific. The region must remain a driver of global growth and stability. We will be underlining that today through our deliberations, which I'm confident will be useful and productive.

I thank you all for being here, and I would request you to make your opening remarks, starting with Australia. So over to you, Penny.

FOREIGN MINISTER WONG: Thank you very much, Minister Jaishankar. And can I thank you for hosting us here in Delhi, for bringing us together? We meet in the world's largest democracy and a power that is so important in the shaping of the Indo-Pacific and the world. And to Secretary Rubio, can I acknowledge that since you have been in office, the leadership that you have shown on the Quad - I think the very first meeting after you were sworn in - we appreciate it. And Minister Motegi has been there from the very beginning, so he's one of the original Quad ministers, so thank you for your leadership as well.

I wanted to start by reflecting on a point that Minister Jaishankar made at one of our earlier Quads in Washington, I think, and you spoke about choices and about doing what we can together to ensure that the Indo-Pacific and the countries within it have the freedom of choice on their security and on asserting their sovereign interests - the freedom of choice on their development and on the future of the region we all share. And that is central to how Australia approaches our engagement in the Quad. It's why this partnership and this meeting matters so much to Australia. And it matters to us, it matters to the region, and therefore it matters to the world.

I think we all understand we meet today with a region that is under pressure - accelerating contest, a deteriorating strategic environment, and acute economic stress. We are four sovereign nations. We have our own histories, our own interests, but there is great alignment between our interests. And we all share a vision for the Indo-Pacific: a region that is free and open, a region that is peaceful, stable and prosperous. And we each bring our unique perspective, experiences, and strengths together as we work to achieve such a region.

As the Quad, we've delivered concrete results when we've responded to natural disasters, when we've mobilized to support communities affected by things like the earthquake in Myanmar or the landslide in Papua New Guinea. We've also cooperated on critical infrastructure, undersea cables, we've cooperated on maritime security, and we've cooperated on critical minerals. We all want the Quad to be as strong and as effective as we can make it be, focused on delivering, and we are determined to continue its momentum. This is the future we want for our region - peaceful, stable, prosperous region - and today we continue the work to build that. Thank you, Jai.

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: Thank you. May I now request Japan, Minister Motegi.

FOREIGN MINISTER MOTEGI: Thank you, Jai. I'll speak in Japanese.

(Via interpreter) I am happy to hold the Quad foreign ministers' meeting today.

(In English) I wait. (Laughter.)

(Via interpreter) So today I am delighted to hold this Quad foreign ministers' meeting. I would like to thank Jai for kindly hosting the meeting. Back in 2019, September, when I was a foreign minister last time, an inaugural Quad foreign ministers' meeting was held, so I have special fondness for a Quad meeting. This is the 11th meeting of the Quad foreign ministerial, and this meeting signifies unshaken, firm message to the world that Quad will strongly promote practical cooperation to realize free and open Indo-Pacific.

It has been just 10 years since the FOIP has been advocated, and there has been a -structural changes happening to the international order. In order to respond to those changes of the time, Prime Minister Takaichi has stated that FOIP will be updated. Main point of the update is that the Indo-Pacific nations show the strength and resilience and the necessary capacity to determine their own future, including the economic security decisions. So today I hope to have frank discussion, including how this perspective can accelerate the Quad collaboration.

(In English) Thank you so much.

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: Thank you, Toshi. Could I ask Marco (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you. And first I want to thank Minister Jaishankar and the Indian Government for hosting us - not just me personally, but - over the last three days - not just - I want to thank Minister Jaishankar and the Indian Government for hosting us here, not just in the bilateral visit over the last three days but for hosting this important gathering here again today. I want to thank Toshi and Penny as well for joining us, your willingness to come over here and do this. And it comes at an important time.

It was our goal, as I began as Secretary of State - and has been pointed out earlier, my first meeting as a Secretary of State was the Quad, literally within minutes of being sworn in. And I thought that demonstrated our commitment to this process. But our goal collectively over the last year has been to turn this from a forum in which we meet and talk about problems to one where we actually do something about it. And I think we can report to our peoples respectively that we are beginning to do that pretty aggressively and pretty impressively on the areas of cooperation. And it's also interesting that on - the areas that we are working together on have become even more relevant and more important because of recent events around the world. And so today I think we'll make even further progress on operationalizing our relationship on the areas that we can cooperate on.

And by the way, the most interesting thing about the Quad is not simply that we are - it is a gathering of four strategic allies in which we come together to sort of compare notes about areas of common interest, but also - and it's - not only is it increasingly becoming a forum by which we begin to take action, but each of these four nations represented here today bring unique capabilities that collectively we can bring to bear on some of the most significant problems facing the world, whether it's a humanitarian response, whether it's the security of energy, whether it's the freedom of navigation, whether it's the need to diversify our supplies of not just energy but critical minerals and supply chains. These are areas where all four of our countries, collectively and individually, can bring tremendous assets to bear in terms of solving these problems.

So thank you for hosting us, and I know we're going to continue to not just meet but take action, because a lot of work happens after our meetings. Our staffs go back, they coordinate year-round, constantly. We have people at the State Department that are specifically assigned to this relationship and to this forum and to turning it into action. And today will just continue to build upon the momentum that already exists and, hopefully, begin to increasingly show to the people of our respective countries the momentum that's behind this strategic - this gathering of strategic allies. So thank you.

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: Thank you very much. So we will now give the press time to relocate and resume our discussions.

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