Japan, India could ink pact before signing N-deal

Tokyo: Japan could ink a "stricter" bilateral agreement with India to overcome the dilemma it faces in signing a civilian atomic pact with it, the Japanese media reported on Monday as it highlighted the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Quoting an unnamed Japanese Foreign Ministry official, Kyodo news agency reported that Japan will be able to seek tighter regulation of India's nuclear programme through a bilateral nuclear pact.

"Bilateral arrangements could be stricter than obligations for non-nuclear states under the NPT," the Japanese diplomat said.

As the only country to have suffered atomic bombings, Japan is facing a dilemma in its negotiation of a civilian nuclear cooperation pact with India, which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The ongoing visit to Japan by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once again highlights the ambivalent feeling in Japan toward the nuclear pact, which would enable Japanese firms to export nuclear power generation technology and related equipment to India, Kyodo said in a commentary.

Tokyo has been negotiating a legal framework for peaceful use and transfer of nuclear-power technologies with other energy-hungry emerging nations, but India's case is unique because of its development of nuclear weapons and refusal to sign the NPT, it noted.

The launch in June of bilateral talks on a nuclear cooperation accord immediately triggered an outcry from survivors of the 1945 US atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But at the same time, Japan has been trying to pull itself out of its longstanding economic doldrums by boosting growth through exports of infrastructure, including nuclear power plants, amid intensifying international competition for large-scale projects.

"Furthermore, Tokyo has a diplomatically strategic reason to strengthen its ties with India, as the fast-growing Asian democracy could serve as a counterbalance to China, which has recently adopted an increasingly confrontational stance toward Japan over a territorial issue," Kyodo said.

Major English language newspapers like the Japan Times and Daily Yomiuri and daily Nikkei highlighted the visit of Singh and prominently carried his interaction with the Japanese media in New Delhi.

'Japan Times' carried a report on Singh's arrival in Tokyo and about the talks he will hold with the Japanese leadership.

The Daily Yomiuri and the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun edition also carried reports about the visit of the Prime Minister.