Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, pledge to strengthen the defense and security partnership between Australia and India, at a time of increasing Western fears of New Delhi adopting more independent policies towards Russia and China.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi pledged at the end of their meeting on Friday to strengthen relations in the field of defence.
After today’s meeting, Modi assured reporters that “security cooperation is an important pillar of the comprehensive strategic partnership between India and Australia,” and posted a video clip on his Twitter account celebrating with his guest the mutual friendship.
For his part, the Australian Prime Minister confirmed that “significant and ambitious” progress had been made with India in the field of defence.
During the four-day visit, Albanese announced from aboard INS Vibrant, India’s first aircraft carrier, that new joint military exercises between India and Australia would soon be held.
Albanese added: “We discussed the increasingly uncertain global security environment, and pledged to strengthen the defense and security partnership between Australia and India.”
The joint meeting took place the day after the opening of a cricket match in Gujarat, Modi’s home state, which he attended with Albanyzi, while the latter is supposed to leave New Delhi on Saturday morning.
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The Australian Prime Minister will meet again with his Indian counterpart in Australia, next May, on the occasion of a new meeting of the “Quad”.
In addition to the joint economic and trade relations , Australia and India, along with the United States and Japan, form a four-way bloc called the “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad)”, which is an informal strategic alliance that began in 2007 and was revived in 2017 in exchange for China’s military and economic influence in Pacific region.
The navies of Japan, the United States, India and Australia conducted the large-scale joint military maneuvers “Malabar”, from the 8th to the 15th of November, in the Pacific region in the Kanto region off the Japanese coast.
The United States has been seeking for years to establish and strengthen its alliances in the Pacific, Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia regions, against the background of the new strategic direction of “containing China”, which is based on an attempt to curtail the Chinese presence in Asia, Africa and the world. Creation of the Quad alliance with India.
This comes while India, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and the broad Western campaign against Russia, has taken a more neutral and positive stance towards Moscow, as it has confirmed more than once its readiness to sponsor a political solution to the crisis, and stressed the need to stop the escalation and adhere to peaceful solutions, at a time when the West pushed with all its alliances to take hostile and hardline stances against Moscow in politics and economics.
Source : almayadeen.net
