The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting next month will be followed by a meeting of the foreign ministers of Quad countries.

ToI has learnt that foreign minister S Jaishankar will have a breakfast meeting with his Australian, Japanese and US counterparts – Penny Wong, Yoshimasa Hayashi and Antony Blinken respectively – on March 3.The 3 ministers will participate in the G20 meeting on March 1-2, which will also be attended by their Russian and Chinese counterparts, and stay back for the Raisina Dialogue.

While reaffirming their commitment to a free, open, resilient and inclusive Indo-Pacific in the face of growing Chinese assertiveness, the Quad ministerial is expected to finalise the agenda for the Quad summit which will be hosted by Australia this year.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese will arrive in India on March 8 for a bilateral summit during which he and PM Narendra Modi will discuss, among other things, efforts under the Quad mechanism to uphold the ``rules-based international order’’.As the foreign ministers had said in a joint statement after their meeting last year on the sidelines of the UNGA, Quad seeks to promote the principles of freedom, rule of law, democratic values, peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty, and territorial integrity are respected.

Both Moscow and Beijing see Quad as an exercise meant to contain China.

India is the only Quad country which has not condemned Russia’s actions in Ukraine and while the conflict is unlikely to dominate the ministerial agenda, given India’s ties with Moscow, the meeting is likely to express strong opposition to any unilateral action meant to change the status quo, or exacerbate tensions.

in the Indo-Pacific.Speaking at the inaugural Raisina@Sydney Saturday, Jaishankar described Quad as a development of great consequence with a salience ``which very few would have predicted, perhaps even two or three years ago’’.``Four countries not geographically contiguous at all, with an enormous amount of sea space and some land space between them, but who have, in different ways, overcome their own past outlook, to forge something common in response to a perceived global and regional need,’’ said the minister.While touching upon concerns related to terrorism and maritime security, Jaishankar said there are also growing concerns about financial sustainability.

``I think there are more than 70 countries who have or are engaging the IMF, in terms of stabilizing their national finances.

And unlike in the near past, many of these are not low income countries, some of them are middle income countries,’’ said the minister.