Ukraine crisis to dominate Quad meet, Will this put India in a tricky situation? | India News | WION

now india's prime minister narendra modi has a hectic week ahead he will have 40 hours for 23 engagements japan will be hosting all the high stakes meetings the indian prime minister will be attending the quad summit on tuesday that is 24th of may and separate bilateral meetings are also scheduled with the group leaders that is u.s president joe biden japanese prime minister fumio kushida and the incoming australian prime minister elect anthony albanese on monday morning arrangements are in place to have these people sworn in as members of my team [Applause] to enable penny and i to attend the important quad leaders meeting in tokyo with president biden prime minister kishida and prime minister modi india's foreign secretary vinnie kwatra held a press conference he gave details about the aim of this crucial visit during the quad summit leaders will review the progress of quad initiatives they will identify new areas of cooperation partners who share a world view and have a common vision for the future coming together to take on key challenges of our age from covet to climate to emerging technologies it embodies an approach i spoke of at the un earlier this week when we met six months ago and for more on this joining us from the ground is beyond managing editor palki welcome to the broadcast now my first question to you is like most high stakes meetings right now the ukraine war is expected to dominate the talks between court leaders but do you think that this puts india in a tricky situation because new delhi has decided to choose dialogue over sanctions unlike the rest of the three coordinations right it is uh uh going to be a bit of a challenge for new delhi to navigate this one but remember uh ananya the quad has seen leadership transitions in japan uh in uh in the u.s so joe biden taking over after 2017 when the quad was resurrected and then uh now the australian new australian prime minister expected to take over and attend this summit so quad has uh seen that and overcome those disruptions if i may uh the quad has also seen uh internal differences vis-a-vis the the russia ukraine war remember this is the first in-person meeting after the war broke out but the coordinators did have a virtual meeting in the month of march and uh this this grouping has sort of uh got an institutionalized identity now in the last uh two years when they've had they've had four meetings first in march 2021 which was virtual then uh the washington dc meeting in september last year then the march 2022 virtual meeting and now this one in the month of may in tokyo so uh there's a lot going for this grouping and and i'm sure they'll find a way to overcome this this uh this difference which is a clear difference because yesterday uh there was a meeting in bangkok of trade ministers of various countries and the us and the the japanese representatives were among those who staged a walkout the moment the russian uh trade minister started speaking so so these nations led by the us have made it a point to call out russia on every platform and i do not think that the quad will be an exception so the challenge for tool india will be to state its point clearly and uh and firmly at the same time work towards the common goals that the quad has set for itself right now china is going to be another issue expected on the cards as hostility towards taiwan continues to grow how do you think that the quad plans to address this uh to my mind this is a bigger challenge than the russia ukraine war because remember the quad has been existence for what 17 years now and uh many have accused it of having an identity crisis is it the asian red cross is it the asian nato or something in between and the quad has done a lot in the past couple of years or five years if if i have to uh to work on various challenges from vaccination to to climate change and everything in between but they've not done very much to further their security goals and the war in ukraine is a clear reminder that a similar situation may arise in asia thanks to chinese aggression and that's something that the quad leaders will have to address immediately and on priority and they've not been uh ready to even name china as a threat so so that puts a question mark on how much they're prepared to do vis-a-vis the chinese threat uh from what i gather from the local press and anya uh the quad is set to launch a maritime satellite based tracking system and this is to check illegal fishing in china so that's a first step uh china is price seen as the largest perpetrator of illegal fishing and that threatens uh uh the livelihood the traditional livelihood of many countries in this region so this would be a good start but there's a lot that needs to be done to to counter the chinese threat yesterday the japanese government also launched a formal protest against china for uh for some construction activity in the east china sea so they have made a a lot of noises but the quad has not really come forward and and spelt it out in so many words that china remains a security threat to the region and something needs to be done to counter it right thank you for your insights that was beyond managing editor pakishan padilla reporting from tokyo [Music]