The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Foreign ministers of the four Quad countries, India, Australia, Japan and United States will have a ministerial meeting right after they attend the inauguration of the second presidential term of Donald Trump.
Earlier on Sunday, January 12, Japanese foreign minister Iwaya Takeshi revealed on a programme on NHK that he will attend the inauguration ceremony of the Trump administration on January 20.
On the same day, India announced that external affair minister S. Jaishankar will be attending the event on invitation from the Trump-Vance Inaugural committee. In Canberra, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong issued that she too will be participating in the ceremony as a “demonstration of the steadfast alliance between Australia and the United States”.
While other foreign leaders have also been invited, the presence of the foreign ministers of all the Quad countries at the same event would make it likely that they would be meeting as a group too with the Trump administration’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
The Japanese news agency Kyodo had quoted an unnamed Japanese government source as having said that the Quad foreign ministers are likely to meet on January 21.
Meanwhile, the Japanese prime minister’s special adviser on national security, Akihisa Nagashima posted on X on January 13 that if the first meeting of Quad foreign ministers was to be held, “I think we [will be able to] dispel most worries and concerns”.
“The Trump administration’s emphasis on Quad will have a significant impact on future security in the Indo-Pacific,” he wrote.
It is likely that the ministerial meeting will decide on the agenda for the leaders’ summit which will take place later this year in India.
The last Quad leaders’ summit was held in Delaware, outgoing president Joe Biden’s hometown, just a couple of months before the November presidential election.