Addressing a joint press meet with Abe, Modi said, “No friend will matter more in realising India’s economic dreams than Japan” while describing Abe as “a personal friend and a great champion of India-Japan partnership”.
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“Japan is promoting (nuclear) nonproliferation, given the history of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, while India is outside the NPT framework but wants to cooperate on nuclear power generation”, one Japanese official said while noting Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bombings.
India and Japan signed agreements including an MoU with Japan on civil nuclear energy and announced that the deal was not just about commerce and clean energy but also a sign of mutual confidence and partnership for a secure world.
PM Modi said, “Bullet trains enterprise will revolutionise Indian Railways., and will become the engine of economic transformation in India by speeding up India’s journey into the future”.
The two sides also inked agreements – one concerning the Transfer of Defence Equipment and Technology and another related to Security Measures for Protection of Classified Military Information.
“India and Japan will work to strengthen regional economic and security forums and coordinate their actions to tackle global challenges including the reform of the United Nations, climate change as well as terrorism”, it said.
“In September 2014 in Tokyo, Prime Minister Abe spoke of $35 billion of Japanese finance and investments for India over five years”, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a news conference with Abe. “We have made enormous progress in economic cooperation as also in our regional partnership and security cooperation”, said PM Modi after signing the deal.
“We will also strive for our rightful place in a reformed UN Security Council”.
Japan also pledged a ¥50 billion loan to India for a public-private partnership infrastructure project.
Praising Modi’s reforms programme, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, “Prime Minister Modi’s speed of implementing policies and reforms is like Shinkansen (bullet train) and his reform agenda is as safe as Shinkansen“. “Our strategic cooperation is very important. Japanese company will manufacture here and export it to Japan”, he said.
On Saturday, Abe referred to India’s stand that it would continue a moratorium on nuclear tests and advance its use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
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Regarding the civil nuclear pact, another hurdle in the negotiation was the fact that India, despite being a de facto nuclear weapons state, has not joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
