Ashok Tuteja
Tribune News ServiceNew Delhi, December 28
As the Prime Ministers of India and Japan held informal talks this evening on bilateral ties, Tokyo expressed the hope that India would sign the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) while it remained non-committal on cooperating with New Delhi in the civil nuclear energy field.
Officials accompanying Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on his first ‘stand-alone’ overseas visit after coming to power said Tokyo was keen to strengthen economic and security cooperation with India in the coming days.
Manmohan Singh is to host a private dinner for the 62-year-old Japanese leader, whose party swept the August election, ending nearly five-decades of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party rule.
Prior to his arrival in New Delhi, the Japanese leader met captains of the Indian industry in Mumbai. They included Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, the heads of top Indian conglomerates the Tata Group and Reliance Industries.
Significantly, he also held a meeting with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who happened to be in Mumbai.
Talking to reporters here, Kazuo Kodama, official spokesman for the visiting leader, said the two Prime Ministers would tomorrow hold official-level talks and issue a joint statement. The joint statement would emphasise the fact that India and Japan shared fundamental values, like democracy, rule of law and human rights. It would reiterate their commitment to strengthen and deepen strategic and global partnership between the two countries.
The joint statement will also announce the setting up of a new ‘Two plus Two’ framework between the two countries to develop security cooperation to combat sea piracy. The framework will have representatives from the Foreign and Defence ministries of the two countries.
India and Japan have strengthened defence ties in recent years with a security cooperation agreement inked in 2008. India is the only country besides the United States with which Japan has signed such a pact.
Asked if the emerging India-Japan axis could be aimed at countering China, the Japanese official retorted: ‘’Let me emphasise that the promotion of India-Japan relations would not be at the cost of any third country… I know India’s position is also the same.’’
On whether there was any possibility of Japan cooperating with India in the civil nuclear energy area, the Japanese spokesman said the issue would be discussed by the two Prime Ministers. He, however, noted that the Japanese Prime Minister has welcomed India’s unilateral moratorium on further nuclear testing. “At the same time, Japan hopes India will sign the CTBT and we would also like to see the early commencement of negotiations on FMCT (fissile material cut off treaty).”
Noting that there was a dual-use export control authority back home in his country, which approved commerce with other countries in high-technology items, he said the two countries need to conduct more negotiations before any concrete proposals could emerge.
On the proposed Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project, the Japanese spokesman said it would be a global manufacturing hub supported by world class infrastructure. The industrial corridor that will pass through the states of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra would triple the industrial output in five years and open up vast employment opportunities.
