India External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar: Thank you, everybody. Minister Wong, Minister Motegi, Secretary Rubio, ladies and gentlemen. We've just concluded a very substantive and productive meeting of the foreign ministers. And I thank Penny, Toshi, Marco for being here, making the effort and for what's, as I said, been a very, very good meeting. Now, this is our first meeting in 2026. We have met twice in 2025. Understandably, much of the discussions and indeed the bilateral exchanges were devoted to the current state of the world.
Being Quad, we naturally focused on issues of particular relevance to the Indo-Pacific because we are four maritime democracies located at different ends of the Indo-Pacific, the exchange of perspectives was an exercise of considerable value. The maritime domain has seen a steady expansion of collaboration including surveillance and domain awareness, logistics networks, undersea cables, training, capacity building, and HADR activities. We will be continuing to deepen these areas in time.
We spent some time on the question of safe and unimpeded maritime commerce and reaffirmed the significance of scrupulously observing international law. Our four nations are also market economies. We believe strongly that economic resilience should be promoted, that supply chains should be strengthened, trusted and secure technologies diffused, and production capacities enhanced. Our deliberations touched on the current energy and fertiliser availability, as well as that of critical minerals and resources. The goal is to intensify cooperation among ourselves, while also assisting others.
We, the Quad nations, are open societies who foster innovation and creativity in our quest for growth and prosperity. These forces are strengthened when we undertake more exchanges, as we intend to do. So, whether it is in business forums, healthcare initiatives, or digital activities, each facet of a joint effort makes the region that much better. As democratic nations, we also devoted attention to countering the common threat of terrorism. There must be zero tolerance for terrorism and nations subject to terrorist attacks have the right to defend themselves. A Free and Open Indo-Pacific has many dimensions and facets. Our meeting today took stock of the progress in many of them while encouraging exploration in others. In the coming days, whether it is economic activity, energy trade or maritime commerce, the Indo-Pacific will become even more important to the world. The responsibilities of the Quad will grow commensurately, and we must prepare for that. So, as the host, let me thank my colleagues for their valuable contributions in what has been a very productive and forward-thinking meeting. Thank you.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong: Thank you very much. And I'll start again by thanking my good friend Minister Jaishankar and India for hosting today's meeting and acknowledge my counterparts, Minister Motegi and Secretary Rubio. This is the third Quad meeting we have had since Secretary Rubio took office, and we thank him for his leadership. And we also acknowledge Minister Motegi, who has been part of the Quad since the very beginning. And at every meeting that we have had, we have been focused on momentum and on making sure we deliver outcomes which are real, which are meaningful for our people and for the people of the Indo-Pacific.
As Minister Jaishankar has said, we recognise our obligation, our responsibility to provide real choices, particularly as strategic circumstances in our region are deteriorating. The region is facing acute economic stress. We know the world is more unpredictable. We know economic volatility is increasing. And we know the consequences for our region of the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz and what that means for our energy security, for our economies, and for our people. We recognise the efforts of Secretary Rubio towards a diplomatic resolution to ensure freedom of navigation is restored and crucial energy supplies flow. And we recognise the importance of maintaining the principle of freedom of navigation and our opposition to any tolling proposition.
The Quad is today taking forward a number of new initiatives, an energy security initiative, and, of course, our continued work on critical minerals, because we understand that secure and reliable supply chains are a precondition to economic and strategic stability. We are also today announcing the strongest ever commitment from the Quad to the Pacific through the Quad Ports of the Future Partnership, where we are launching a pilot for port infrastructure in Fiji. I was in Fiji just a couple of weeks ago, and I know how important this will be to that country. It's a practical demonstration of our collective ability to deliver high quality, resilient infrastructure in partnership with the region and in response to Pacific priorities.
In addition, we are focusing on all we can do to ensure a transparent, more secure maritime domain in the Indo-Pacific. This is the context in which freedom of navigation and strategic stability can be operationalised. And you are seeing that we will be coordinating our maritime surveillance efforts initially in the Indian Ocean and at Exercise Malabar through the Indo-Pacific Maritime Surveillance Collaboration Initiative. And we are also expanding the domain awareness initiative to the Indian Ocean. This will enable partners to access near real-time unclassified satellite tracking data to combat illegal fishing, trafficking and also enable us to better support humanitarian disaster response.
A point I do also want to emphasise, in terms of outcomes we've delivered to date, is that we are delivering as a collective undersea cables to all Pacific Island Forum countries, which enhances economic opportunities. We are also working together to strengthen cooperation against scam centres, particularly in South-East Asia, building law enforcement capacity and deepening cyber cooperation. These are just some of the measures, practical measures, our countries are engaged in. We know we are stronger when we work together. We know we work better in partnership across our region and we work best by listening to the priorities of our region and delivering practical outcomes to make a difference to our people's lives. Thank you very much.
Japan Foreign Affairs Minister Toshimitsu Motegi: (Interpretation audio not available)
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio: Let me begin by thanking India for hosting this. We appreciate it very much. Ministers Jaishankar, Wong, Motegi, thank you for this very productive discussion and the work that our teams have been doing leading up to this as we continue to build out this partnership into something that is a partnership of action. I'll talk about that more in a moment.
Let me first point out that on the stage today are represented countries that collectively are about a third of the world's GDP, almost 2 billion people. And these aren't just countries that have economic reach. They are countries who share strong values, strong, vibrant democracies, who also are committed to many of the same concepts with regards to economic development and have many aligned interests in those fields as well. And so the goal is to turn the Quad - and 16 months ago when I became Secretary of State and we began our conversation - we all agreed that we wanted this gathering, this partnership to be more than just a place where we got together every now and then and discussed the problems of the world that we held in common, but a form of action where we can begin to turn our collective interests into action to the benefit of the people of our countries, but ultimately to the benefit of many other countries around the world who would benefit from some of the things we're working on today. And I'm very happy today that as a result of the work that our teams have been doing leading up to this conversation today and our conversations today, we have real concrete achievements that we can announce to our respective countries and to 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 countries' maritime surveillance capabilities in the Indo-Pacific to enhance information sharing. Related to that is also the expansion of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative, which provides and can provide near real-time commercial maritime domain awareness data to countries throughout the Indo-Pacific. And last, I also want to thank India for committing to hosting the next iteration of the Quad at Sea Mission, which brings together our respective coast guards in one place on one ship. And the reason why maritime security is so important, beyond the fact that current events remind us of what can happen when maritime security is impeded, is the fact that 60 percent of global maritime trade passes through the Indo-Pacific, and it's a vital national interest not just to the four countries represented here today, but to dozens and dozens of countries, countless countries around the world.
The second initiative is an exciting one, and that is that we're going to be partnering on issues of port infrastructure, in particular in response to insufficient port capacity in the Pacific Islands. But 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 project, 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 third topic, which we hear a lot about these days, that we'll have some deliverables on today is the issue of critical minerals. We'll announce the Quad Critical Minerals Framework, which will guide each of us to leverage economic policy tools and coordinate investment to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, including in mining, processing, and critical minerals for recycling. Finally, on energy and fuel security, we'll be announcing the Quad Initiative on Indo-Pacific Energy Security that will help strengthen regional energy resilience. And through this initiative, the partners will work to identify areas of cooperation in technology, management, policy, international market analysis, and emergency response exercises. We'll be releasing a standalone statement on this initiative, and the Department of Energy from the United States will be hosting Quad partners later this year for a fuel security forum to further expand on this.
So we are beginning to show real achievements and real accomplishments. We are deeply committed to this partnership. It is a linchpin and a cornerstone of our global strategy as a nation in the United States. That's why we're so happy to be here today, and that's why we're excited about the initiative that we're announcing. We're even more excited about the initiatives we're going to be working on together as these take life and new opportunities to present themselves. And I want to thank all of you for being here. I want to thank you for hosting us, Minister Jaishankar. And I want to thank India, by the way, for being a tremendous host. We've been here now for four days, and it's been phenomenal. So thank you as well for everything you've done since your welcome in allowing us to meet with so many people, and just as important for hosting this event. Thank you.