The Quad Summit of India, Australia, Japan and the United States scheduled on 24 May in Sydney has been 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.
The White House announced early on Wednesday that Biden will return to the US after the conclusion of the G7 Summit in Japan and not travel to Papua New Guinea and Australia as planned earlier. Biden also conveyed his decision to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Albanese confirmed to the media this morning that the Quad Leaders Summit in Sydney had been cancelled. “This is a decision that’s been made overnight…in the United States. The Quad leaders’ meeting will not be going ahead in Sydney next week,” he said.
He said the leaders of the four Quad countries could meet on the margins of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan. “We thought will be having that discussion between Quad leaders in Japan…The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at the leadership level, and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend,” Albanese said. All four Quad leaders — President Biden, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Albanese– will be at the G7 Summit to be held in Hiroshima on Saturday and Sunday.
Albanese said a planned bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Modi in Australia might still go ahead although there was no immediate word from the Indian side on whether Modi also would change his itinerary, now that the Quad Summit has been cancelled.
New Delhi announced yesterday that PM Modi would embark on a visit to Japan, Papua New Guinea and Australia on 19 May to participate in outreach sessions of the G7 Summit on 20 May, the Summit of the Forum for India–Pacific Islands Cooperation on 22 May, and the Quad Leaders Summit on 24 May.