Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave here tomorrow morning on a three-nation tour of Japan, Papua New Guinea and Australia.
He will participate in the G7 Summit in Hiroshima where India has been invited as a guest country. ”We are also planning a Quad leaders’ meeting in Hiroshima,” Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said at a media briefing here today.
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The Quad Summit was scheduled to be held on 24 May in Sydney but had to be cancelled after US President Joe Biden decided not to go ahead with a planned visit to Australia due to debt ceiling negotiations back home in America.
Kwatra said that since all four Quad leaders would be in Hiroshima for the G7 Summit, efforts were being made to have their meeting in the Japanese city itself. Apart from President Joe Biden of the US and PM Modi, the Quad meeting is to be attended by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The PM will also hold a bilateral meeting with the Japanese PM. He is scheduled to unveil a bust of Mahatma Gandhi in Hiroshima. Modi will also hold bilateral discussions with several leaders in the G7 as also with the guest countries and international organisations.
During the G7 Summit, the PM will speak at G-7 sessions with partner countries, on subjects such as peace, stability and prosperity of a sustainable planet; food, fertiliser and energy security; health; gender equality; climate change and environment; resilient infrastructure; and development cooperation.
He will then travel to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where he will host the 3rd Summit of the Forum for India–Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC III Summit) jointly with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape on 22 May.
Launched in 2014, FIPIC involves India and 14 Pacific Island Countries (PICs), namely, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, Niue, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, Palau, Nauru and Solomon Islands.
On the last leg of his tour, the PM will travel to Sydney from 22-24 May.