Dialogue (QUAD)

Dialogue (QUAD) ™ It is an informal mechanism between India, the US, Australia and Japan, and interpreted as a joint effort to counter China’s influence in the India-Pacific region. ™ The idea of the QUAD could be originally attributed to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. ™ It got operationalized in and was revived in . On the organisational structure, The SAARC has a four-tier institutional set-up, which includes the summits comprising of the Heads of all the South Asian States and they meet once in every two years; The Council of Ministers comprises of the Ministers of Foreign / External Affairs of the Member States the Standing Committee comprises of the Foreign Secretaries of the SAARC Member States and the Technical Committees comprising representatives of Member States are responsible for the implementation, coordination and monitoring of the programmes in their respective areas of cooperation. Until now nearly eighteen summits have been hosted by the member states. The SAARC member counties taking the growing economy scenario in South Asia have formed the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). The agreement came into force in , succeeding the SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement. One of the main aims of the SAFTA is to recognize the need for special and differential treatment of developing counties in South Asia and formulate policies that would support the growth of the entire region. ASEAN ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) was established on August in Bangkok, Thailand, with the signing of the ASEAN declaration or popularly known as the Bangkok declaration by the founding fathers of ASEAN, namely Indonesia , Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Since the establishment of ASEAN, other South-East Asian Nations who were not part of the organisation initially have also joined, which includes Brunei Darussalam joining on January , Vietnam on July , Laos and Myanmar on July , and Cambodia on April . ASEAN has around ten primary member states and it has been the only official organization that pursued regional economic integration in East Asia. It is responsible for several economic integration initiatives