India, Japan sign strategic partnership

India, Japan sign strategic partnership


Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is on a two-day visit to India, met Prime Minister Manomhan Singh today.

Opening a new chapter in their ties, India and Japan decided to launch a high-level strategic dialogue, upgrade economic links and enhance energy, security and defence cooperation.

After wide-ranging talks on a host of issues, Singh and his visiting Japanese counterpart signed a path-breaking joint statement outlining an updated vision of the India-Japan global partnership.

This has been worked out in the backdrop of steady development of bilateral relations in recent years and the far-reaching changes in the international situation, particularly in Asia.

The document captioned "India-Japan Partnership in the New Asian Era: Strategic Orientation of India-Japan Global Partnership" lays down an eight-fold initiative, envisaging:

* enhanced and upgraded dialogue architecture, comprehensive economic engagement

* enhanced security dialogue and initiatives in science and technology

* cultural and academic fields

* people to people contacts

* and cooperation in the UN and other international organisations

Interestingly, both sides will work together on non proliferation.

Koizumi's predecessor Yoshiro Mori had promised a global partnership in 2001, but nothing happened on that because Tokyo was one of India's strongest critics for the nuclear tests.

Large-scale projects

It was also agreed upon that Japan would provide assistance to India for large-scale projects in infrastructure sector, according to highly placed sources.

A major project they agreed to examine is a high- speed computerised freight train between Mumbai and Delhi and Delhi and Kolkata.

This will be part of the Railway Golden Quadrilateral, which will run parallel to the existing Road Golden Quadrilateral.