SYDNEY: Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong met her Indian and Japanese counterparts in Washington and said the invitation for Quad foreign ministers to attend President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration showed an \u201ciron-clad commitment\u201d to close cooperation in the Indo Pacific region.<\/p>\n
Republican Senator Marco Rubio appears on track for confirmation as Trump\u2019s secretary of state on Monday, clearing the way for a meeting of Quad foreign ministers the following day, people familiar with the matter previously said.
\nThe grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the US was formed amid shared concerns about China\u2019s growing power.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a demonstration of the collective commitment of all countries to the Quad, an iron-clad commitment in this time where close cooperation in the Indo-Pacific is so important,\u201d Wong said on Sunday of the foreign ministers\u2019 invitation to Washington.
\nWong said she would also meet Rubio and other members of the Trump administration, adding the US alliance was critical to Australia\u2019s defense and economic prosperity. Wong is expected to discuss the AUKUS defense technology partnership with the US and Britain, a decades-long plan to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.
\nShe told reporters in Washington that Australia was \u201con a pathway of increasing defense expenditure.\u201d
\n\u201cOur focus is very much on how do we continue to deliver on AUKUS, because we do believe that capability is so important for deterrence, which is the way in which you can secure peace,\u201d she said.
\nDefense Minister Richard Marles said in a radio interview on Monday that AUKUS would see Australia make a significant funding contribution to the American industrial base to speed up US production rates of Virginia class submarines. (Reporting by Kirsty Needham, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SYDNEY: Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong met her Indian and Japanese counterparts in Washington and said the invitation for Quad foreign ministers to attend President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration showed an \u201ciron-clad commitment\u201d to close cooperation in the Indo Pacific region. Republican Senator Marco Rubio appears on track for confirmation as Trump\u2019s secretary of state on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456569,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-456556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n