INDIA: India and Japan vowed to seal an economic partnership deal by December as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged New Delhi to join Tokyo in the creation of an Asian "arc of freedom."
Abe laid out his vision for a new four-way "arc of freedom and prosperity" bringing together Australia, India, Japan and the US.
With China rising, Japan is pushing ahead with a strategic partnership in India and other nations, but New Delhi - not keen to upset Beijing - has said the initiative should not be seen as a "zero-sum game."
"A new broader Asia that broke away from geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form," said Abe, who arrived in India on Tuesday, accompanied by 200 top Japanese executives.
"By Japan and India coming together in this way, this 'broader Asia' will evolve into an immense network spanning the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, incorporating the United States of America and Australia," he said in an address to a special session of the Indian parliament.
Abe and Singh later said they had agreed to expand cooperation in the fields of energy security and environmental protection.
They also called for a drive to accelerate the creation a proposed 100-billion-dollar industrial corridor from Delhi to the Arabian sea port of Mumbai.
"We also agreed that bilateral cooperation in security has progressed and we discussed future course of action to expand its scope," Abe told a news conference after talks with Singh.
He urged India to "participate in a responsible manner on long-term international objectives of fighting greenhouses gases by 2050."
"We welcome prime minister Abe's initiatives on climate change but we must also ensure energy security to fight poverty and we call for Japan's participation in this sector," Singh told reporters with Abe at his side.
The two leaders said India and Japan had set the target of more than doubling bilateral trade to 20 billion dollars by 2010 from eight billion currently.
"Economic ties are at the core of our partnership," Singh said.
Meanwhile Abe was set to meet the descendants of an Indian nationalist who advocated violent resistance against British rule and sided with imperial Japan during World War II.
Making a private detour, he was to fly to the eastern city of Kolkata from the capital New Delhi on the last day of a three-day trip that included talks with Premier Manmohan Singh.
A meeting has been fixed for him to meet the relatives of Subhash Chandra Bose, who broke with Indian pacifist icon Mahatma Gandhi to advocate violent resistance to British colonial rule.
No comments:
Post a Comment