NEW DELHI, May 26. /TASS/. The Quadrilateral Dialogue on Security and Development (QUAD), which brings together India, Australia, the United States and Japan, is launching an initiative to expand cooperation on maritime surveillance in the Indo-Pacific region, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a joint press conference following the meeting of the four countries’ foreign ministers.
"We have real concrete achievables that we can announce to our respective countries into the world on the issue of maritime security. There are two big announcements. The first is the launch of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Corporation initiative, which is going to leverage each of our country’s maritime surveillance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific to enhance information sharing," he said.
"Related to that is also the expansion of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative, which provides and will provide near real-time commercial maritime domain awareness data to countries throughout the Indo-Pacific," Rubio added.
QUAD countries also plan "to be partnering on issues of port infrastructure, in particular in response to insufficient port capacity in the Pacific Islands," he noted. "We’re announcing plans to work with Fiji to advance that country’s port infrastructure. It’ll be the first time that the Quad partners work together on a port infrastructure project. We believe it will be very successful, and that it will serve as a model for other projects in the future," the official stressed.
