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, underscoring India’s commitment to strengthening defence partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region.
Singh made the announcement of his engagements in a series of posts on X, where he extended an invitation for New Zealand 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,” the Defence Minister said in his post.
Singh also met South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back, describing it as a “delight to meet” him on the sidelines of the ADMM-Plus.
“It was a delight to meet South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back on the sidelines of ADMM-Plus in Kuala Lumpur,” he stated in a separate post.
Singh further shared that he was “happy to have met Defence Minister Phan Van Giang” of Vietnam in Kuala Lumpur, reflecting the growing defence ties between India and Vietnam, two key partners in the Indo-Pacific region.
These meetings are part of India’s broader engagement within the ADMM-Plus, where regional and dialogue partners convene to discuss cooperation in defence, security, and maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.
Earlier, the Defence Minister arrived for the 12th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus), where he will be addressing 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). ADMM-Plus is a platform for ASEAN member states, which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. Its eight Dialogue Partners–India, the US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand–to strengthen security and defence cooperation.
India became a dialogue partner of ASEAN in 1992, and the inaugural ADMM-Plus meeting was convened in Hanoi, Vietnam, in October 2010.
Since 2017, the ADMM-Plus has been held annually to bolster defence cooperation among ASEAN and its partner countries. Under the current ADMM-Plus framework, India serves as the co-chair of the Experts Working Group on Counter-Terrorism alongside Malaysia for the cycle 2024-2027. (ANI)
