World News | India, Australia deepen security ties as tensions with China mount: WSJ

washington [US]March 12 (ANI): India and Australia are deepening security and economic ties as tensions with China mount, with both countries seeking to diversify export markets, strengthen supply chains and Upgrade your army. .

During his first visit to India since 2017, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said India would take part in a major Australian-US military exercise later in 2023 for the first time. He said Australia and India would collaborate on clean energy, including making solar panels.

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Albanese watched a cricket match and toured an Indian aircraft carrier during his visit to India. “My visit reflects my government’s commitment to placing India at the heart of Australia’s approach to the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” he said.

Relations between Australia and India have been warm in recent years. Like the United States and Japan, both countries are members of the Quartet Security Dialogue, a group of democracies aimed at countering Chinese expansionism. Last year, Australia and India signed an interim free trade agreement that eliminated or reduced tariffs and tariffs on many of each other’s products, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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“Our relationship is at its best and it is certainly the strongest in India’s 75 years of independence,” said University of Queensland vice-chancellor Peter Varghese, who was previously Australia’s high commissioner to India.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both India and Australia are interested in reducing their dependence on China. A diplomatic spat has prompted China, Australia’s largest trading partner, to impose restrictions on Australian products including beef, barley, coal and wine amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prime Minister Modi said after meeting with Albanese that security cooperation is an important pillar of the partnership between the two countries. He noted that the two leaders discussed maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region and enhancing information exchange between the two countries’ security agencies.

The relationship between Australia and India has seen its ups and downs, with foreign policy experts saying it will be hard to move beyond the so-called three Cs: curry, cricket and the Commonwealth, formerly the British territories that include Australia and India, according to the Wall Street Journal. But experts say the political will to deepen ties between Australia and India is now clearly there.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Harsh V. Pant, vice president for foreign policy at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, as saying: “Of course, the China factor has injected new momentum into the relationship between the two countries.”

India, which has traditionally maintained a non-aligned status, has become more open to defense partnerships with other countries as tensions with China have risen, he added. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)