<p>A two-day parley between Indian and Japanese officials in Tokyo beginning Monday is expected to kick-start negotiations for a bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement.<br />Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Toronto over the weekend is also expected to give a boost to the negotiations.<br /><br />India has already inked civil nuclear agreements with the United States, France and Russia. It is set to ink another pact with Canada during the PM’s stay in Toronto. Delhi is also currently negotiating yet another deal with Seoul.<br /><br />Significant achievement<br />However, a deal with Japan — the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks — would undoubtedly be seen as a significant achievement in India’s efforts to end the isolation it was forced into after its first nuclear test in 1974.<br /><br />Proliferation has been a very sensitive issue in Japan and Tokyo had been initially reluctant to strike any nuclear deal with New Delhi, particularly because the latter has not yet signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.<br />Highly placed sources in the government on Friday said an Indian delegation led by the Joint Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs, Gautam Bambawale, would reach Tokyo soon for the first meeting of the India-Japan Joint Working Group on Nuclear Energy.<br /><br />Bambawale’s counterpart Mitsuru Kitano, the Deputy Director General (Southeast and Southwest Asian Affairs) in the Japanese government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed Tokyo’s special representative for negotiations on a nuclear deal with New Delhi.<br /><br />Tokyo apparently softened its stand on a nuclear deal with New Delhi, as top Japanese companies like Toshiba and Hitachi had been lobbying hard for an inter-governmental framework agreement that would allow them to tap the huge nuclear market in India.<br />The two countries had agreed to set up a joint working group during the fourth bilateral energy dialogue here on April 30 last.<br /><br />New Delhi has since long been trying to woo Japan’s nuclear companies to do business in India and proposed an agreement for civilian nuclear energy cooperation with Tokyo during Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s tour in December 2009.<br />But the Japanese side was not ready to ink the deal immediately, although Hatoyama, who leads the centrist Democratic Party of Japan government in Tokyo, had promised to consider lifting restrictions on high-technology trade and sale of nuclear materials and technologies to India after Singh had assured him that New Delhi would not divert any import from Japan for its own weapons programme or to any third country.<br />DH News Service</p>
<p>A two-day parley between Indian and Japanese officials in Tokyo beginning Monday is expected to kick-start negotiations for a bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement.<br />Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Toronto over the weekend is also expected to give a boost to the negotiations.<br /><br />India has already inked civil nuclear agreements with the United States, France and Russia. It is set to ink another pact with Canada during the PM’s stay in Toronto. Delhi is also currently negotiating yet another deal with Seoul.<br /><br />Significant achievement<br />However, a deal with Japan — the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks — would undoubtedly be seen as a significant achievement in India’s efforts to end the isolation it was forced into after its first nuclear test in 1974.<br /><br />Proliferation has been a very sensitive issue in Japan and Tokyo had been initially reluctant to strike any nuclear deal with New Delhi, particularly because the latter has not yet signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.<br />Highly placed sources in the government on Friday said an Indian delegation led by the Joint Secretary (East Asia) in the Ministry of External Affairs, Gautam Bambawale, would reach Tokyo soon for the first meeting of the India-Japan Joint Working Group on Nuclear Energy.<br /><br />Bambawale’s counterpart Mitsuru Kitano, the Deputy Director General (Southeast and Southwest Asian Affairs) in the Japanese government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed Tokyo’s special representative for negotiations on a nuclear deal with New Delhi.<br /><br />Tokyo apparently softened its stand on a nuclear deal with New Delhi, as top Japanese companies like Toshiba and Hitachi had been lobbying hard for an inter-governmental framework agreement that would allow them to tap the huge nuclear market in India.<br />The two countries had agreed to set up a joint working group during the fourth bilateral energy dialogue here on April 30 last.<br /><br />New Delhi has since long been trying to woo Japan’s nuclear companies to do business in India and proposed an agreement for civilian nuclear energy cooperation with Tokyo during Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s tour in December 2009.<br />But the Japanese side was not ready to ink the deal immediately, although Hatoyama, who leads the centrist Democratic Party of Japan government in Tokyo, had promised to consider lifting restrictions on high-technology trade and sale of nuclear materials and technologies to India after Singh had assured him that New Delhi would not divert any import from Japan for its own weapons programme or to any third country.<br />DH News Service</p>
