Indian Ambassador to the United States, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, on Wednesday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the importance of climate action finance, transfer of technologies, and facilitation of clean, green tech at the Quad Leaders’ Summit on September 25.
In an exclusive interview to Anand Narsimhan, senior anchor at CNN-News18, Sandhu said the Quad, comprising of leaders from the United States, Japan, India and Australia, expanded the scope of discussion to include new areas of cooperation such as space cyber security high standards of infrastructure and education in the first in-person summit held in the US.
The meeting followed the progressive upgrading of the Quad meeting from foreign ministers in the first virtual summit from March 2021, in which President Biden had indicated that he will hold the first summit in person at the end of the year.
“You will recall that there were three clear areas of tactical interaction identified in the virtual summit, that is Covid-19 vaccine, climate change and critical technologies,” said Sandhu.
“At this summit they reviewed these, took stock of these three initiatives and the leaders expanded the scope to include new areas of complete cooperation,” he added.
The new areas included space, cyber security, high standard infrastructure and education.
“Let me lay out a bit on each of these. In space, partnership will exchange satellite data, focus on monitoring, adapting climate change, disaster preparedness, sustainable use of ocean and marine resources and on responding to challenges,” explained Sandhu.
Stressing on the importance of cyber security, he said, “there was a decision that the government and industry will work together for improvements in areas which include cyber standards, secure software, building workforce and talent in all countries and also prompting trust worthy digital infrastructure.”
“In infrastructure itself the new partnerships are looking at mapping of the region’s infrastructure needs, then coordinating the needs with technical assistance and empowering the regional partners and promoting sustainable infrastructure development,” he said.
Sandhu said that this is first time the subject of education came up in QUAD. “There is a Quad fellowship program which will enable 10 students from poor countries to study in each other’s countries through scholarship. These all are practical people oriented and underpinned by mutual respect and cooperation for global common good. As the Prime Minister has repeatedly stressed the QUAD is a force of global good.”
On being asked if Quad and AUKUS were groupings of similar regions, Sandhu said,
“My one-word answer to you is certainly not. Quad is a plurilateral, that have shared visions and values.”
Ahead of the summit, the White House said that the Quad leaders would announce a new working group on space, a supply chain initiative and a 5G deployment and diversification effort apart from discussing issues like challenges in the Indo Pacific, climate change and COVID-19 pandemic during their historic meeting. Quad leaders are also planning to roll out vaccine deliverables and announce a series of measures in the field of healthcare and infrastructure sector, officials said.
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