In India on Saturday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in principle on concluding a civil nuclear cooperation pact, saying the deal will be signed after technical details are finalized.
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The two prime ministers also finalised a deal on a $12 billion project to lay India’s first bullet train network between commercial nerve centre of Mumbai and Ahmedabad at today’s summit talks.
The most eye-catching deal was the new bullet train which will slash journey times between the Indian cities of Mumbai and Ahmedabad, reportedly from eight hours to about two hours. “It will become an engine of economic transformation in India”, Modi stated. Along with the rail agreement, Modi and Abe signed agreements on nuclear energy cooperation and defense equipment transfers.
These include working on defence technology, and agreeing a memorandum of understanding on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Addressing a joint press meet with Abe, Modi said, No friend will matter more in realising Indias economic dreams than Japan while describing Abe as a personal friend and a great champion of India-Japan partnership. Japan will assist India in training personnel for the High-Speed Rail. Maruti Suzuki is expected to begin export of India-made vehicle Baleno to Japan from January 2016. They called for security cooperation between Japan, India, the US and Australia, reflecting a strategy already agreed by the USA and Japan, which is aimed at checking China’s ambitions in the South China Sea.
On the issue of testing, India had a “long-standing position”, said Jaishankar, noting that the global community’s exception for India in NSG was also predicated on voluntary moratorium.
Modi, who along with Abe will visit Varanasi later in the day, said culture and people breathe life into a relationship. “Japanese private investments are also rising sharply”. The MoU was inked by Indian and Japanese Prime Ministers.
A joint statement pointed to cooperation between India and Japan in the Indo-Pacific, which experts see as sending a message to China.
Japan is a major player in the nuclear energy market and an atomic deal with it will also make it easier for US-based nuclear plant makers Westinghouse Electric Corporation and GE Energy Inc to set up atomic plants in India as both these conglomerates have Japanese investments.
Stating that each country has its own practice on the nuclear issue, he said that even the ways India did such agreements were different.
“I would hesitate to put a timeline because I am not conversant with the Japanese internal procedures and their timelines”, Jaishanker said.
The government hopes to de facto include India, which is not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in the NPT regime by binding the country with strict rules under the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement.
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New Delhi and Tokyo, both of which have territorial disputes with Beijing, have no claims in the waterway but worry about China’s growing military reach into sea lanes through which much of Japan’s shipborne trade passes.
