New Delhi, July 17
The fate of a civil nuclear deal between India and Japan has become uncertain. Tokyo is learnt to have decided to suspend talks with India and four other countries concerning the sale of Japanese-made nuclear power equipment and technology after Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s recent declaration that he wants to phase out the use of nuclear energy.

The decision concerns negotiations over completing separate nuclear power cooperation agreements with India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Negotiations with all five countries have stalled since the earthquake and tsunami in March triggered a nuclear crisis in northeastern Japan.

Japan needs to sign bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with a foreign country and have it endorsed by Parliament in order to export nuclear power technology and equipment.

Any move to proceed with the talks now “could risk contradicting the Prime Minister’s policy,” government sources were quoted as saying by the Japanese news agency Kyodo.

So the government will not schedule any high-level talks with the five prospective buyer countries on completing nuclear cooperation accords without a green light from Kan, the sources indicated.

Tokyo’s decision could give a major setback to India’s ambitious civil nuclear energy programme. India and Japan have been negotiating a nuclear agreement since June last year. Top officials of the two countries have so far held two rounds of talks but differences persist on many critical issues.

There were apprehensions in New Delhi since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March that the radiation fallout could affect the nuclear deal that the two countries were considering to formally announce during the Japanese PM’s visit to India towards the end of the year.

The talks on the pact with India had triggered an outcry in Japan from survivors of the 1945 US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They expressed fears that the deal would hamper global efforts to realise a world without atomic weapons.

In the event of an India-Japan nuclear deal not materialising, American and French nuclear majors too would find it difficult to enter the Indian nuclear market.