Washington, Sep 20 (IANS): The Quad group of India, Australia, Japan and the US may appear to have whittled down the security cooperation part of its remit but increased cooperation in maritime security had picked up pace out of public limelight as has defence cooperation bilaterally and multilaterally between them, the United States said ahead of a meeting of the leaders of the group here in the US on Saturday.

A senior White House official, Mira Rapp-Hooper, who is with the National Security Council, said on Thursday at a news conference to preview the meeting, that the leaders could discuss Bangladesh developments as a "plan to focus on each neighbourhood in the region".

US President Joe Biden is hosting a meeting with foreign leaders for the first time in his hometown Wilmington, which Rapp-Hooper said, reflected how deeply invested the President is in the Quad personally.

Biden will also meet the Quad leaders in separate bilateral meetings.

This meeting of the Quad leaders was to be hosted by India, but because of scheduling issues India and the US decided to swap their turns. The US will host the summit now and India will take the US' turn next year.

Rapp-Hooper, who is a senior official in Biden's National Security Council, also said that the US sees India "as a leader within the Quad".

"There is incredible defence cooperation amongst the US and Australia, US and Japan, US and India, increasingly among those countries themselves," Rapp-Hooper said in response to a question if the member countries should do more on security cooperation.

“And the Quad, with a small Q, has a number of different other activities that we participate in, such as the annual Malabar exercise, which involves all four of our countries," she said. Rapp-Hooper was referring to a range of cooperation among the Quad countries as a counter-argument to criticism that member countries are whittling the security aspect of the cooperation.