The foreign ministers of India, the US, Australia and Japan on Saturday called it an “absolute necessity” to protect navigational rights in the Strait of Hormuz , the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where ships and crews should pass without tolls, and voiced “grave concerns” over economic coercion through arbitrary export restrictions, even as US secretary of state Marco Rubio said a meeting of Quad leaders in Manila next month would be announced very soon.
The ministers condemned criminal groups that run online scam operations and traffic people to force them to defraud citizens of the four countries, stealing tens of billions of dollars a year, and committed to dismantling the operations and holding the groups and their leaders accountable. The Philippines holds Asean’s rotating chair this year, and HT reported on October 17 that the Quad was exploring a leaders’ summit on the sidelines of the bloc’s meetings in Manila. All four Quad countries are comprehensive strategic partners of Asean and back its outlook on the Indo-Pacific, and their foreign ministers issued a joint statement in Manila in July on cooperation with the 11-member bloc. India’s 2021 rules requiring telecom operators to buy from trusted sources have effectively shut out Chinese vendors such as Huawei and ZTE. They recognised India’s role as first responder after the August 26 flash floods in Nepal, alongside support from all Quad countries.
The ministers objected to “non-market policies and practices that result in overcapacity” in critical industries, a charge the US and the European Union have repeatedly levelled at Chinese steel, solar and electric-vehicle makers. They said the four countries were recovering critical minerals from electronic waste and scrap “to reduce reliance on any single supplier”, with the US committing $10 million to such facilities in India and Asean countries. The four countries discussed strengthening their strategic petroleum reserves and stockholdings at the first Quad Fuel Security Forum in September, according to the statement. The four countries will launch an effort to identify chokepoints in semiconductor and SI supply chains before they cause disruptions, and will pick priority countries for cooperation on “trusted” communications networks, including 5G, 6G and Open RAN, a standard that lets operators mix equipment from different vendors.
