Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia], November 1 (HBTV): Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam on the sidelines of the 12th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) in Kuala Lumpur, reaffirming India’s commitment to strengthening defence partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region.
Singh announced the meetings in a series of posts on X, where he stated that he had extended an invitation to New Zealand’s Defence Minister Judith Collins to visit India and reaffirmed their shared vision to build a forward-looking partnership in defence.
‘Glad to meet New Zealand’s Defence Minister Judith Collins in Kuala Lumpur. I extended her the invitation to visit India. Her visit will reaffirm the shared vision of India and New Zealand to build a forward-looking partnership in defence,’ Singh wrote.
The Defence Minister also met his South Korean counterpart, Ahn Gyu-back, describing the meeting as ‘a delight’. ‘It was a delight to meet South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back on the sidelines of ADMM-Plus in Kuala Lumpur,’ he said in another post.
Singh further shared that he was ‘happy to have met Defence Minister Phan Van Giang’ of Vietnam, reflecting the deepening defence ties between India and Vietnam—two key partners in the Indo-Pacific.
These engagements form part of India’s broader participation in the ADMM-Plus, where regional and dialogue partners convene to discuss cooperation in defence, security, and maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
Earlier, the Defence Minister arrived in Kuala Lumpur for the 12th ADMM-Plus, where he will address the forum on Reflection on 15 Years of ADMM-Plus and Charting the Way Forward.
The ADMM serves as the highest defence consultative and cooperative mechanism within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The ADMM-Plus includes ASEAN member states—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam—and its eight dialogue partners: India, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
India became a dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992, and the inaugural ADMM-Plus meeting was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in October 2010. Since 2017, the ADMM-Plus has been convened annually to enhance defence cooperation among ASEAN and its partner countries. Under the current framework, India serves as the co-chair of the Experts Working Group on Counter-Terrorism alongside Malaysia for the 2024–2027 cycle.
(ANI)