Japan came full circle on India's nuclear status as it announced talks in Tokyo on Monday to pursue a civil nuclear agreement with New Delhi, which could be signed when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Japan later this year.
In fact, an economic partnership agreement (EPA), in the pipeline between the two officialdoms for the past couple of years, is also on the cards when the PM travels to Tokyo, it being his turn to visit Japan in 2010. The two leaderships had promised to alternative visits so as to concentrate at expanding their relationship and looking for avenues to expand their respective spheres of influence in the other's region.
The outline of the impending nuclear talks is already clear. India will promise not to conduct any more nuclear tests -- something it had said in 1998 and reiterated when the Indo-US nuclear deal was being debated in the US Congress from 2005-2009 -- as well as promise to abide by tough export control laws.
The India-Japan civil nuclear talks are so unprecedented, they speak volumes of the distance both countries have travelled since Tokyo cut off its billion-dollar official development assistance (ODA) in 1998 when India tested five nuclear devices, and India expressed understanding of Japan's reaction as being the only country in the world to have experienced the horrors of nuclear disaster.
The ODA was restored about a decade later, a sign that Japan was beginning to take note of India's economic strength. But when the Bush administration in 2008 pushed India's case through the 46-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), of which Japan is a member, Tokyo was at first fiercely critical, then gradually accepted America's powers of persuasion.
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, announcing the commencement of the Foreign Office-led nuclear talks in Tokyo, led by Gautam Bambawale and Mitsuru Kitano, admitted it was a "tough decision" for Tokyo to enter into talks with a country like India which had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Having allowed India to clear the NSG, Okada said the general consensus in that group was it was "better for India to take responsible action with certain engagement in the field of non-proliferation" rather than behave like a nuclear power that was acting on its own.
Certainly, Japanese officials admitted on the condition of anonymity, the rising power of neighbouring China, the fact that New Delhi had entered into talks with South Korea to exploit India's growing energy market as well as the considerable pressure by US companies who are joined at the hip with Japanese enterprises combined to persuade the Japanese government to relent in favour of the deal.
Fact is, apart from the precondition of the Nuclear Liability Bill, which India must clear before Japan finalises any kind of nuclear deal with India, US companies like Westinghouse Electric Company and General Electric are either fully or partly owned by Japanese companies Toshiba Corp and Hitachi respectively.
These US companies can only enter the lucrative Indian civilian nuclear energy market, estimated at $100 billion over the next 20 years, if Japanese companies give it permission to do so. In turn, the Japanese companies must seek permission from their government if they have to participate in nuclear trade with a non-NPT country like India.
Meaning, America's heavy lifting in favour of India at the NSG could all come to nought if Japan doesn't give permission to its companies to allow its US partners to get some of the benefit of India's open nuclear market.
While business pressures may have eventually tipped the scale, fact is that Tokyo has also begun to see New Delhi as a creative partner. Japanese businessmen are already tied into one of India's biggest contracts, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor project, but the potential to work together in third countries, such as Afghanistan, also exists.
