India, France and Australia came together to deal with China's conspiracy, resolved to ensure unhindered movement in the Indo-Pacific Ocean

India, Australia, and France have asserted their belief in free, open, and international traffic in the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The statement from all three nations came out at a juncture when China was uninterruptedly moving on its policy of occupation within the limits of the sea area and sought to stop the movement of ships belonging to other countries through the occupation of the South China Sea.

Focus points were discussed in the meeting of officials of the three countries held in New Delhi on Thursday. The Ministry of External Affairs said that in this trilateral meeting, there was a discussion on increasing cooperation in maritime security and maritime and environmental security, among other things.

In this meeting, the progress in the work being done regarding the decisions taken earlier was reviewed and the discussion points for the future meeting were decided. In the future, the three countries will keep the discussion focused on maritime and environmental security. The three countries resolved to increase further cooperation to maintain free, open, and rule-based movement on sea routes.

This cooperation of the three countries results from the initiative taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on maritime security in November 2019. Modi had appealed to increase collaboration between like-minded countries at the 14th East Asia Summit. Joint Secretary Piyush Srivastava and Joint Secretary Parmita Tripathi in MEA led the delegation from India in the meeting. While officials of the foreign ministries of the respective countries headed delegations from Australia and France.