Prime Minister Modi emphasised that he wanted India and Japan to move ahead together, not just in the sphere of high-speed trains, but also for “high-speed growth”.
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Capping years of arrangements, India andJapan on Saturday sealed a broad agreement for cooperation in civil nuclear energy with the final offer to be signed after particular technical and legal issues are thrashed out.
Explaining why India deeply values the strategic partnership with Japan, Modi said, “No friend will matter more in realizing India’s economic dreams than Japan and I cannot think of a strategic partnership that can exercise a more profound influence on shaping the course of Asia and our interlinked ocean regions more than ours”.
On December 11 a memorandum of co-operation was signed by India’s Ministry of Railways and Japan’s Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport & Tourism.
Japan will provide $12 billion to build a bullet train that will run between the western cities of Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The Prime Minister said it is clear that India is a land of possibilities.
It also said that maintenance of the peace and tranquility in the Indo-Pacific waters was a shared goal of the two countries. “It was ambitious”, Modi said of the pledge.
He said closer cooperation between the two countries is also “strategically important”.
On his part, Abe said, “We have taken relationship to new level and buds have turned into blossoms”.
“We will also strive for our rightful place in a reformed UN Security Council”. Mr Abe, in turn, declared a “new dawn in the relationship”. This is different from the electronic visa facility that is being extended globally.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in India on Friday on a three-day sojourn.
As both countries “in principle” agreed for cooperation in civil nuclear energy, Japan today cautioned India that it will be “quite natural” for it to review its cooperation if New Delhi goes for a nuclear test. Beijing “always believes that under the premise of honoring worldwide nuclear non-proliferation obligations, all countries are entitled to make peaceful use of nuclear energy and conduct relevant global cooperation in a way that uphold the authority and effectiveness of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime”.
The Indian government has shown a positive attitude concerning the import of materials, equipment and technology related to nuclear power as part of efforts to ensure a stable supply of energy. “India is trusted internationally”.
“If India does a test and recedes from its commitment, it will be quite natural for Japan to review its cooperation with India”.
China was in talks with India to jointly build a 1,754km track from New Delhi to Chennai that could cost 200 billion yuan (US$29.78 billion), the China Daily reported in November past year.
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On a visit to India, Japan’s premier Shinzo Abe agreed a deal with his counterpart in the country, Narendra Modi, to finance the first bullet trains in India to transform the aged railway system with a $12bn “soft loan”.
