Australia's former PM calls PM Modi, Shinzo Abe "fathers" of Quad

By Ayushi Agarwal
New Delhi [India], March 4 : Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe "fathers" of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, Australia's ex-PM Tony Abbott, on Saturday, said that the Quad is almost a unique product and the "world should be immensely grateful to both of them."
While talking to ANI, Abbott said that Quad is the most important strategic development in the world since the formation of NATO. He further said that Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi are the only Asian leaders who could have initiated the Quad.
"So I think 2 fathers of QUAD are Shinzo Abe and Modi and the world should be immensely grateful to both of them," Australia's former PM said.
Talking about the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, Abbott said, "It is getting stronger and stronger over time. The ECTA - Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement - that we have finalised last year symbolises this new strength."
"I also think that the cavalcade of Australian ministers who have been in Delhi over the last couple of weeks - and the PM is coming in just a week or so - is also highly symbolic of the strength and the relationship," he added.
Talking about the relationship with New Delhi, the former PM said that India is an increasingly close strategic partner. India is a country which has always been a natural partner for Australia, he said.
Meanwhile, regarding its relations with China, Abbott said, "Australia has nothing against Chinese people. They are everywhere, we just wanted to get ahead of the problem Chinese communist party, which is aggressively pursuing global domination. China is bullying all its neighbours and casting a deeply malevolent eye on Taiwan. I have to say that any attempt by China to take Taiwan would be horrific by several orders of magnitude. It would be greater than the conflict in Ukraine. We have to collectively raise the cost to Beijing of any aggression across the Taiwan strait."
"I am confident that this will help to showcase India not just as a regional power but as the world's second democratic superpower I think this is very much a side of India's strategic and diplomatic age," he said while talking about the G20 presidency.
Yesterday, Australia's former PM, in the panel discussion on 'Materials that Matter: Battle for Securing Critical Supply Chains' during Raisina Dialogue, said that China uses trade as a weapon in a way that almost no other country does.
The former Australian PM said that China wants the whole world to be dependent on it but it wants to be independent of the world.
"China wants the rest of the world to be dependent on it and it wants to be completely independent for its part of the rest of the world. And this is part of the clearly stated objective of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to be the world's number one power by mid-century. And I think we have to appreciate that China uses trade as a weapon in a way that almost no other country does. So I think we have to be very conscious of just how exposed we could be," Abbott said.