India positive about AUKUS: Australian PM
NEW DELHI: The new security alliance between Australia, Britain and the US complements the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad and has been embraced by leaders of India and Japan, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday.
The new alliance called AUKUS “complements, rather than takes away from” what the Quad members are doing to ensure a free and open Indo-pacific region, Morrison said during an online briefing for Indian media. The Quad, he added, has moved into a “much more ambitious chapter” following its first in-person leaders’ summit in
Washington.
AUKUS was unveiled recently by Morrison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden against the backdrop of China’s assertive actions across the Indo-pacific, and its first initiative is aimed at equipping Australia with nuclearpowered submarines built with technology from the US and the UK.
Foreign secretary Harsh Shringla said last week that AUKUS has no link with the Quad and will have no impact on the functioning of the grouping. The Quad members, he added, are working on a shared vision of ensuring that the Indo-pacific is a free, open and inclusive region. However, Morrison said during the briefing that there was a “very warm embrace of the AUKUS announcement by our Quad partners”. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga had “totally understood and supported what we were seeking to achieve” through AUKUS.
“And they totally were positive about how it complemented the Quad...they totally understood it, understand its strategic significance, the direction, how it was going to help and add to what we’re all doing,” he said.
The Indian side has been keen to play down an embrace of AUKUS because such a stance could aggravate tensions with China amid a dragging military standoff on the Line of Actual Control. China has reacted angrily to the formation of AUKUS. The Indian side also has in mind the sensitivities of its strategic ally France, which was upset as the new alliance resulted in Australia scrapping a nearly $90-billion deal to build 12 French-designed conventional submarines.