India-Aus virtual summit: Our partnership will be crucial in this era of pandemic, PM Modi to Aussie PM Scott MorrisonNEW DELHI: India and Australia will explore opportunities at their Thursday summit that could see Canberra supplying rare earth minerals to Delhi elevating partnership to the next level.
Australia has huge deposits of minerals including rare ores. The countries had been working on cooperation in critical and strategic minerals, sources told ET. Australia wants to diversify exports of rare earth metals to emerging partners like India.
‘Rare earth elements’ is a term applied to 17 metals used in the production of electronics. The market for rare earth elements is worth around $24.3 billion annually and Australia can increase its share in that. And amid Australia-China in the recent months since the outbreak of Covid, Canberra is eying India as a key market for rare earths.
India – Australia Virtual Leaders’ Summit is scheduled to be held on June 4. This will be the first time that Prime Minister of India would be holding a “bilateral” Virtual Summit with a foreign leader.
The Virtual Summit will be an opportunity for the two leaders to review the broad framework of the relationship in the context of their growing ties. It will also be an opportunity to discuss their respective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of MoUs and announcements are expected to be made. This includes Mutual Logistics Pact for the two navies.
Since the high-level visit of PM Scott Morrison to India was in the pipeline (13-16 January and later in May 2020), the two leaders decided to continue the engagement even though it was in the form of a Virtual Meeting. This is the first time that India is holding a Virtual Summit. Australia has already done one such bilateral virtual summit with Singapore in March 2020.
The focus would be on the positive trajectory in bilateral relations during discussions between the two Prime Ministers, who have already met on four occasions on the sidelines of multilateral meetings. [PM Modi and PM Morrison have met four times during the last one and a half years – on the sidelines of EAS in Singapore (14 November 2018), on the sidelines of G20 in Osaka (29 June 2019), on the margins of G7 Summit in Biarritz (25 August 2019) and on the margins of EAS in Bangkok (04 November 2019).]
The two nations have much in common, underpinned by shared values of pluralistic, Westminster-style democracies, Commonwealth traditions, the long-standing people-to-people ties, and sporting links, sources pointed out as they recalled that relationship between the two nations was upgraded to a ‘Strategic Partnership’ in 2009.
“As two democratic nations, India and Australia have developed an understanding of each other’s perspectives on regional and global issues. We have a shared approach to a free open, inclusive, and prosperous Indo-Pacific. This has led to convergence of mutual interest in many areas. The relations are strong not only at the bilateral level, but also at the plurilateral level,” a senior source noted.
Australia has supported India’s global initiatives such as ISA, CDRI and Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative. Australia supports India’s membership of an expanded UNSC. In the recent past, Australia supported our membership for Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement and favours India’s membership of NSG.
Australia has been supportive of India’s position on cross-border terrorism and on asking Pakistan to take meaningful action against terrorist groups operating from its soil. Australia also co-sponsored UNSC resolution to declare Azhar Masood a global terrorist. Australia values India’s diversity and inclusiveness and has holds the view that recent developments with regard to J&K are India’s internal matters, sources pointed out.
The two-way Prime Ministerial visits in 2014 added momentum to the strategic partnership (Tony Abbott’s visit in September 2014 followed by PM visit in November 2014). This was followed by the visits of then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in April 2017 and the Governor General of Australia in March 2018 to attend the founding Summit of the International Solar Alliance. President Ram Na made an historic visit to Australia in November 2018 – the first ever visit by the President of India to Australia.
Australia, in its White Paper on Foreign Policy -2017, recognised India as the “pre-eminent maritime power among Indian Ocean countries” and a “front-rank partner of Australia”.
During the last five years, bilateral relations between both countries have strengthened and expanded, sources pointed out.
Framework for Security Cooperation between Australia and India signed in November 2014 during the visit of Modi to Australia laid an action plan on Foreign, Defence and Security Policy Exchanges & Coordination. Several new initiatives and bilateral/trilateral mechanisms such as Foreign Secretaries and Defence Secretaries 2+ 2 Dialogue, India-Australia-Indonesia Trilateral Dialogue, India-Australia-Japan Trilateral Dialogue have been established since then. These new platforms have provided greater momentum to strengthen strategic cooperation and added momentum to the partnership in Indo-Pacific region.
India and Australia commenced their first bilateral naval exercise ‘AUSINDEX’ in 2015 focussed at deepening defence and maritime cooperation especially in the Indian Ocean. The third iteration of AUSINDEX – 2019 was held in the Bay of Bengal in April 2019. AUSTRAHIND, bilateral Army exercises conducted between two countries, also started in 2016. The fourth iteration of AUSTRAHIND was held in September 2019 in Australia. There is regular staff to staff talks between the three wings of the Armed Forces.
Bilateral economic engagement has been growing. The current trade levels are $ 20.92 (2018-19). India exported goods and services worth $ 5.17 billion and imported goods and services worth $ 15.75 in 2018-19. Australia’s cumulative investment in India is about $ 10.74 billion whereas India’s total investment in Australia is $ 10.45 billion. Australian Pension Fund has invested $ 1 billion in India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund. The two countries are looking at stepping up investments and trade with each other.
There is a 700,000 strong Indian diaspora in Australia. There are about 1,06,000 students studying in Australia. Under the Mission Vande Bharat, 1560 Indian nationals and five OCI card holders were evacuated from Australia in seven flights in the second phase of the exercise last month. Total Australians evacuated from India by these flights: were 1096. (03 flights from Sydney to Delhi, Amritsar and Ahmedabad; 04 flights from Melbourne to Amritsar, Bengaluru, Kochi and Hyderabad).
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India-Aus virtual summit: Our partnership will be crucial in this era of pandemic, PM Modi to Aussie PM Scott Morrison
Source: indiatimes.com
