'Japan can help build our nuke industry'

Japan can make a susbstantive difference to India’s nuclear industry, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said on Friday, ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to New Delhi.

Abe will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the annual Japan-India summit in New Delhi next week. This is going to be the first summit between Modi and Abe after the India-Japan civil nuclear cooperation agreement came into force last July.

“The difference that Japan can make to our nuclear industry can be quite substantive,” Jaishankar said.

The ‘India-Japan Agreement for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy’ was signed on November 11, 2016 during Modi’s visit to Tokyo for the annual summit with Abe — eight years after the Indo-US nuclear deal ended India’s isolation from global nuclear commerce.

New Delhi and Tokyo had started formal negotiations for a civil nuclear cooperation agreement in June 2010, but the talks were suspended followed a mishap at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan on March 11, 2011.

The negotiations resumed on September 3, 2013. It was finally inked last year.

An agreement between Tokyo and New Delhi was perceived to be a pre-requisite for the US firms, particularly for Westinghouse and General Electricals, which have parent companies — Toshiba and Hitachi, respectively — based in Japan.

The upcoming Modi-Abe summit is likely to step up India-Japan defence cooperation.

India and Japan inked two framework agreements last year — one for the transfer of defence equipment and technology and another for security measures for the protection of classified military information.

DH News Service