Biden to new Australian prime minister: “It’s okay if you fell asleep here”

SANAA, May 24 (YPA) – US President Joe Biden cracked a joke saying that no one would criticize Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese if he fell asleep as at the meeting of the leaders of the countries of the Quadruple Security Dialogue Quad (Australia, India, the United States and Japan) that started on May 24 in Tokyo on Tuesday.

This way, Biden saluted the new Australian prime minister, who went to Tokyo less than a day after his election.

“You swore an oath and immediately boarded the plane! I don’t know how you manage to do this, but it will be fine if you sleep here,” Biden said at the opening of the meeting of Quad leaders.

Biden congratulated Albanese on his election victory.

“We appreciate your willingness to come here so soon after taking office,” he said.

Quad was founded in 2007 as an interoperability mechanism for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

In November 2017, four countries (Australia, India, the US and Japan) formed a coalition under a new strategy to secure critical shipping routes in the Indo-Pacific region. The first quadripartite meeting of the foreign ministers of the countries took place in September 2019 in New York.

In March 2021, the first Quartet summit was held. Due to the coronavirus epidemic, it was held in a virtual format, and the first face-to-face Quad summit was held in Washington in September last year.

E.M