Melbourne:  External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar and  Australian Foreign Min Marise Payne held 4th Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Melbourne on Friday. 

Jaishankar is on an official visit to Australia from February 10-13 at the invitation of his Australian counterpart Marise Payne, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a release. The MEA also said that this will be his first visit as External Affairs Minister to Australia.

Australia is hosting India, Japan and the United States for the fourth Quad Foreign Ministers' meeting and the top diplomats are seeking to bolster cooperation in areas including economy, security, coronavirus pandemic and free and open Indo-Pacific.

Australian Foreign Min Marise Payne said, "Quad is partnership committed to openness, transparency, practical cooperation, to support regional recovery in face of COVID-19 and regional security. It's that what the four democracies can bring to support priorities of Indo-Pacific partners." 

"For Australia, India-Japan-US are the closest partners. In response to strategic competition in Indo-Pacific, we're working together to both amplify and coordinate responses to the most pressing issues that concern the nations across our region."

"We are on track to support the production of an additional 1 billion vaccine doses in India," added Payne.

Jaishankar said, "Since our last interaction in Feb 2021, geo-political and geo-economic global scenario has become more complex. As leading democracies, we pursue our shared vision of upholding a rules-based international order free from coercion".

"As pandemic continues to impact us, we've undertaken collective efforts to address global health security, Quad vaccine initiative and our collective vaccine delivery. These have been very crucial for countries in Indo-Pacific to meet these challenges," said Jaishankar.