Antony Blinken to meet Quad counterparts in New Delhi amid rising tensions with China: Official

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be meeting his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia, next week amid rising tensions with China, top State Department official Donald Lu said.

He added that Blinken will be holding an hour-long meet on March 03 in New Delhi, India, on the sidelines of the G20 meet, where they will also focus on disaster relief and vaccine aid measures.

"The Quad is not a military alliance; the Quad is not in fact an organisation that is against any single country or group of countries. It stands for trying to promote activities and values that support the Indo-Pacific — a free and open Indo-Pacific," Lu said.

This comes weeks after Blinken cancelled his trip to China after an alleged Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States. He later held a 'tense meet' with Beijing's foreign official Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference where he raised the 'unacceptable' violation of Washington's sovereignty and also warned that Beijing's support to Moscow will call for new sanctions.

As per reports, Blinken has refused to see Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will also be attending the meeting, saying that Russia is not serious about 'peace'.

The concept of Quad was initiated by the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe as he sought unity among the four democracies amid their tensions with China.

Blinken will reach New Delhi after his stops in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan's Astana, where he will be meeting his counterparts from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the other Central Asian former Soviet republics.

(With inputs from agencies)

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