The White House on Thursday said that US President Joe Biden, who is no longer running for the 2024 race, is committed to attending the QUAD summit which is set to take place in India this year.
In a news conference, John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor said that no specific date has been scheduled for the event yet.
“We’re still committed to there being a Quad leader summit this year, but there’s nothing on the calendar right now for it,” he said.
The QUAD, an initiative spearheaded by Biden, consists of four member countries: Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. In the early months of his presidency, Biden convened a virtual QUAD leadership summit in 2020, and since then, the member countries have been holding annual summits on a rotational basis.
This year, India is slated to host the QUAD leadership summit.
Kirby suggested that with Biden’s decision not to seek reelection, there may be more opportunities on his calendar that were previously unavailable. The administration is currently exploring potential opportunities to advance the President’s foreign policy agenda and address national security concerns both domestically and internationally.
“So we’re all exploring what those opportunities can look like in terms of advancing his foreign policy agenda and national security opportunities here and around the world. But I don’t have anything on the schedule to speak to now, but I mean, stay tuned,’ he said.
“I think there’ll be some opportunities that the president is going to want to explore. Look, I mean, we’ve still got a war in Ukraine, still got a war in Gaza, still got climate change to deal with. We’ve still got a very restless Indo-Pacific. I mean, I could go on and on. There’s plenty of things for the national security team to try to continue to get done,” Kirby said in response to a question.