By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON – Senior White House official, Mira Rapp-Hooper with the National Security Council said on Friday at a news conference to preview the Quad meeting that the leaders will discuss Bangladesh developments as a “plan to focus on each neighbourhood in the region”.
Quad group of India, Australia, Japan and the US may appear to have whittled down the security cooperation part of its remit but increased cooperation in maritime security had picked up pace out of public limelight as has defence cooperation bilaterally and multilaterally between them, she said ahead of a meeting of the leaders on Saturday.
US President Joe Biden is hosting Quad summit with foreign leaders for the first time in his hometown Wilmington, Delaware which Rapp-Hooper said, reflected how deeply invested the President Biden is in the Quad personally.
Biden will meet the Quad leaders in separate bilateral meetings, she said.
The meeting of the Quad leaders was to be hosted by India, but because of scheduling issues India and the US decided to swap their turns.
US will host the summit now and India will take the US’ turn next year.
Rapp-Hooper also said that the US sees India “as a leader within the Quad”.
“There is incredible defence cooperation amongst the US and Australia, US and Japan, US and India, increasingly among those countries themselves,” Rapp-Hooper said in response to a question if the member countries should do more on security cooperation.
“And the Quad, with a small Q, has a number of different other activities that we participate in, such as the annual Malabar exercise, which involves all four of our countries,” she said.
Rapp-Hooper referred to a range of cooperation among the Quad countries as a counter-argument to criticism that member countries are whittling the security aspect of the cooperation.
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