Rajnath to attend ASEAN ADMM-Plus in Indonesia

New Delhi: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit Jakarta, Indonesia for two days starting November 16 to attend the 10th Association of South East Asian Nations(ASEAN) Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus). During the meeting, which will take place on November 16, he will address the forum on regional and international security issues. Indonesia is hosting the meeting as it is the chair of ADMM-Plus.

Giving details of his schedule here on Tuesday, defence ministry officials said on the sidelines of the ADMM-Plus, Rajnath will hold bilateral meetings with the Defence Ministers of the participating countries and discuss defence cooperation matters to further strengthen mutually-beneficial engagements.

The ADMM is the highest defence consultative and cooperative mechanism in ASEAN. The ADMM-Plus is a platform for the ASEAN member states (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and its eight



Dialogue Partners (India, US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) to strengthen security and defence cooperation.

India became the dialogue partner of the ASEAN in 1992 and the inaugural ADMM-Plus was convened in Hanoi, Vietnam on October 12, 2010. Since 2017, the ADMM-Plus Ministers have been meeting annually to bolster the cooperation amongst the ASEAN and the Plus countries.

The ADMM-Plus progresses practical cooperation amongst member countries through seven Experts Working Groups (EWGs) namely Maritime Security, Military Medicine, Cyber Security, Peacekeeping Operations, Counter Terrorism, Humanitarian Mine Action and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR).

During the 10th ADMM-Plus, the next set of co-chairs for the cycle 2024-2027 would also be announced. In the present cycle from 2021-2024, India is co-chairing EWG on HADR along with Indonesia.