WASHINGTON, July 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said here on Wednesday that Secretaries of State and Defense, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis, will meet with their Australian counterparts Julie Bishop and Marise Payne next week to discuss bilateral ties and regional issues.
In a press briefing, Nauert said that the meeting, with the full name of 2018 Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), will be held at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California on July 23-24.
The meeting "celebrates 100 years of mateship. It marks the U.S. and Australian forces fighting side-by-side in a battle for the first time, it's been 100 years," she said.
The United States and Australia have held strategic talks annually since 1985. Last year's AUSMIN was held in Sydney in June. Highest on the agenda were terror attacks around the globe and the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
