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

MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Australia Her Excellency Ms. Penny Wong; Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan His Excellency Mr. Toshimitsu Motegi; Secretary of State of the United States of America His Excellency Mr. Marco Rubio; Honorable External Affairs Minister of India Dr. S. Jaishankar. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, distinguished guests, and friends from the media: Namaskar, and a very good morning to all of you. I welcome you to this press statement session. First I invite external affairs minister of India for his remarks to the media. Sir.

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: Thank you, [Moderator]. Minister Wong, Minister Motegi, Secretary Rubio, ladies and gentlemen: we've just concluded a very substantive and productive meeting of the Quad foreign ministers. And I thank Penny, Toshi, Marco for being here, making the effort, and for what's, as I said, been a very, very good meeting.

Now, this is our first meeting in 2026. We had met twice in 2025. Understandably, much of the discussions - and indeed the bilateral exchanges - were devoted to the current state of the world. Being Quad, we naturally focused on issues of particular relevance to the Indo-Pacific. Because we are four maritime democracies located at different ends of the Indo-Pacific, the exchange of perspectives was an exercise of considerable value. The maritime domain has seen a steady expansion of collaboration, including surveillance and domain awareness, logistics network, undersea cables, training, capacity building, and HADR activities. We will be continuing to deepen these areas in the times ahead.

We spent some time on the question of safe and unimpeded maritime commerce and reaffirmed the significance of scrupulously observing international law. Our four nations are also market economies. We believe strongly that economic resilience should be promoted, that supply chains should be strengthened, trusted and secure technologies diffused, and production capacities enhanced. Our deliberations touched on the current energy and fertilizer availability as well as that of critical minerals and resources. The goal is to intensify cooperation among ourselves while also assisting others.

We, the Quad nations, are open societies who foster innovation and creativity in our quest for growth and prosperity. These forces are strengthened when we undertake more exchanges, as we intend to do. So whether it is in business forums, health care initiatives, or digital activities, each facet of a joint effort makes the region that much better. As democratic nations, we also devoted attention to countering the common threat of terrorism. There must be zero tolerance for terrorism, and nations subject to terrorist attacks have the right to defend themselves.

A free and open Indo-Pacific has many dimensions and facets. Our meeting today took stock of the progress in many of them, while encouraging exploration in others. In the coming days, whether it is economic activity, energy trade, or maritime commerce, the Indo-Pacific will become even more important to the world. The responsibilities of the Quad will grow commensurately, and we must prepare for that.

So as the host, let me thank my colleagues for their valuable contributions in what has been a very productive and forward-looking meeting. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. I now invite Minister of Foreign Affairs of Australia for her remarks. Madam, the floor is yours.

FOREIGN MINISTER WONG: Thank you very much. And can I start again by thanking my good friend, Minister Jashankar, and India for hosting today's meeting, and acknowledge my counterparts, Minister Motegi and Secretary Rubio? This is the third Quad meeting we have had since Secretary Rubio took office, and we thank him for his leadership, and as we also acknowledge Minister Motegi, who has been part of the Quad since the very beginning. And at every meeting that we have had, we have been focused on momentum and on making sure we deliver outcomes which are real, which are meaningful for our people and for the people of the Indo-Pacific.

As Minister Jaishankar has said, we recognize our obligation, our responsibility to provide real choices, particularly as strategic circumstances in our region are deteriorating. The region is facing acute economic stress. We know the world is more unpredictable, we know economic volatility is increasing, and we know the consequences for our region of the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz and what that means for our energy security, for our economies, and for our people. We recognize the efforts of Secretary Rubio towards a diplomatic resolution to ensure freedom of navigation is restored and crucial energy supplies flow, and we recognize the importance of maintaining the principle of freedom of navigation and our opposition to any tolling proposition.

The Quad is today taking forward a number of new initiatives, an energy security initiative, one of the - and of course our continued work on critical minerals, because we understand that secure and reliable supply chains are a precondition to economic and strategic stability. We have also - we are also today announcing the strongest ever commitment from the Quad to the Pacific through the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership, where we are launching a pilot for port infrastructure in Fiji. And I was in Fiji just a couple of weeks ago and I know how important this will be to that country. It's a practical demonstration of our collective ability to deliver high quality, resilient infrastructure in partnership with the region and in response to Pacific priorities.

In addition, we are focusing on what more we can do to assure a transparent, more secure maritime domain in the Indo-Pacific. This is the context in which freedom of navigation and strategic stability can be operationalized, and you are seeing that we will be coordinating our maritime surveillance efforts initially in the Indian Ocean and at Exercise Malabar through the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration Initiative, and we are also expanding the Domain Awareness initiative to the Indian Ocean. This will enable partners to access near-real-time unclassified satellite tracking data to combat illegal fishing, trafficking, and also enable us to better support humanitarian disaster response.

A point I do also want to emphasize in terms of outcomes we have delivered to date is that we are delivering, as a collective, undersea cables to all Pacific Island Forum countries, which enhances economic opportunities. We are also working together to strengthen cooperation against scam centers, particularly in Southeast Asia, building law enforcement capacity, and deepening cyber cooperation.

These are just some of the measures - practical measures - Quad countries are engaged in. We know we are stronger when we work together. We know we work better in partnership across our region, and we work best by listening to the priorities of our region and delivering practical outcomes to make a difference to our people's lives. Thank you very much.

MODERATOR: Thank you, Madam Minister. I now invite Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan for his remarks to the media. Sir, the floor is yours.

FOREIGN MINISTER MOTEGI: Thank you very much. I'll speak in Japanese, so could you use headphone?

(Via interpreter) Firstly, I thank Minister Jaishankar for kindly hosting the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting. I thank Jai for being the host. The first time I attended the Quad Foreign Ministerial was back in 2019, September, for the inaugural meeting.

SECRETARY RUBIO: They're working on my headphone - you got it? Okay, thank you.

FOREIGN MINISTER MOTEGI: I thought you understood Japanese - yeah. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RUBIO: So you're going to have to start over. I'm sorry. (Laughter.)

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: He's working on his Japanese.

FOREIGN MINISTER MOTEGI: (Via interpreter) It's been seven years since then, and I am delighted to see the progress of the Quad cooperation, which is the propellant for realizing the FOIP or the free and open Indo-Pacific. Ten years have passed since FOIP has been advocated. There has been significant change in the international circumstance. At the beginning of the meeting today, I emphasized the importance of our four nations of the Quad in realizing the FOIP. I also explained the significance of the updated FOIP. The point of the update of FOIP is that the countries of the Indo-Pacific should strengthen the resiliency and the capacity to determine their own future. Today's meeting gave us a good opportunity to send a unswerving and unshaken message that the Quad will advance the necessary concrete cooperation for this.

Also today, through a frank exchange of views, we were able to align our strategic perceptions on regional developments - and agreed to strongly oppose attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion. We shared deep concern over the export restrictions of critical minerals and others as well. We discussed the North Korean situation, including nuclear and missile problems and cyber activities. We reaffirmed our commitment towards complete denuclearization of North Korea. I received support from the other three countries aiming to bring immediate solution to the (inaudible) issue.

Moreover, as the Iranian situation imposes enormous impact on Indo-Pacific region, energy supply viewpoint included, we confirmed the importance of diplomatic efforts in ensuring free and safe navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as stability to be brought to the Middle East. The energy security initiative to secure stable supply of energy in the Indo-Pacific region is a timely initiative. We would like to partner it with POWERR Asia, a cooperation framework for procurement of crude oil and petroleum products that Japan is promoting.

Furthermore, The Critical Minerals Initiative Framework launched today is a very important initiative from the perspective of strengthening the supply chain of critical minerals, and we will proceed with concrete cooperation. In this way, today we have agreed to promote various cooperation projects. We would like to work together among the Quad to develop resilience and strengthen capacity to determine their own paths in the region, and to promote cooperation that truly benefits this region.

Thank you very much.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. I now invite Secretary of State of the United States of America for his remarks to the media. Sir, the floor is yours.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you. Let me begin by thanking India for hosting this. We appreciate it very much. To Ministers Jaishankar, Wong, and Motegi, thank you for this very productive discussion and the work that our teams have been doing leading up to this as we continue to build out this partnership into something that is a partnership of action. I'll talk about that more in a moment.

Let me first point out that on the stage today is represented countries that collectively are about a third of the world's GDP, over - and almost 2 billion people. And these aren't just countries that have economic reach - a third of the world's GDP, 2 billion people - they are countries who share strong values, strong, vibrant democracies who also are committed to many of the same concepts with regards to economic development and have many aligned interests in those fields as well.

And so the goal is to turn the Quad - and 16 months before - when I became Secretary of State and we began our conversations, we all agreed that we wanted this gathering, this partnership to be more than just a place where we got together every now and then and discussed the problems of the world that we held in common, but a place of action, a forum of action where we can begin to turn our collective interest into action to the benefit of the people of our countries, but ultimately to the benefit of many other countries around the world who would benefit from some of the things we're working on today. And I'm very happy today that, as a result of the work that our teams have been doing leading up to this conversation today - and our conversations today - we have real concrete achievables that we can announce to our respective countries and to the world.

On the issue of maritime security, there are two big announcements. The first is the launch of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Corporation^[1] Initiative, which is going to leverage each of our countries' maritime surveillance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific to enhance information sharing. Related to that is also the expansion of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative, which provides and can provide near real-time commercial maritime domain awareness data to countries throughout the Indo-Pacific.

And last, I also want to thank India for committing to hosting the next iteration of the Quad-at-Sea Mission, which brings together our respective coast guards together in one place on one ship. And the reason why maritime security is so important, beyond the fact that current events remind us of what can happen when maritime security is impeded, is the fact that 60 percent - 60 percent - of global maritime trade passes through the Indo-Pacific. And it's a vital national interest, not just to the four countries represented here today but to dozens and dozens of countries, countless countries around the world.

The second initiative is an exciting one, and that is that we're going to be partnering on issues of port infrastructure, in particular in response to insufficient port capacity in the Pacific Islands, the - we're announcing plans to work with Fiji to advance that country's port infrastructure. It'll be the first time that the Quad partners work together on a project, on a port infrastructure project. We believe it will be very successful and that it will serve as a model for other projects in the future.

The third topic, which we hear a lot about these days, that we'll have some deliverables on today, is the issue of critical minerals. We'll announce the Quad Critical Minerals Framework, which will guide each of us to leverage economic policy tools and coordinate investment to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, including in mining and processing and in critical minerals recycling.

Finally, on energy and fuel security, we'll be announcing the Quad Initiative on Indo-Pacific Energy Security that will help strengthen regional energy resilience. And through this initiative, the partners will work to identify areas of cooperation in technology, in management and policy and international market analysis and emergency response exercises. We want - we'll be releasing a standalone statement on this initiative, and the Department of Energy from the United States will be hosting Quad partners later this year for a fuel security forum to further expand on this.

So we are beginning to show real achievements and real accomplishments. We are deeply committed to this partnership. It is a linchpin and a cornerstone of our global strategy as a nation in the United States. That's why we're so happy to be here today and that's why we're excited about the initiatives that we're announcing, and we're even more excited about the initiatives we're going to be working together as these take life and new opportunities present themselves.

And I want to thank all of you, all three of you, for being here. I want to thank you for hosting us, Minister Jaishankar. And I want to thank India, by the way, for being a tremendous host. We've been here now for four days and it's been a phenomenal visit. So thank you as well for everything you've done to extend such a welcome in allowing us to meet with so many people, and just as importantly, to be - your hosting this event. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Thank you, sir.

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS MINISTER JAISHANKAR: Thank you.

MODERATOR: With that, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the close of this session. We thank the ministers for their participation.

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