EDITORIAL: Japan-India cooperation

Japan has made its first progress in diplomacy in quite a while.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan met Monday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Tokyo and reached a formal accord on a bilateral economic partnership agreement (EPA). The leaders also agreed on rare earth supply cooperation, whereby India will supply Japan with rare earth metals. Beijing has curbed Chinese exports of the materials.

With a population of 1.2 billion, India is the world's second most populated country after China. The Indian people are fluent in English and mathematically gifted. Taking advantage of these assets to develop its information technology industry, India has grown into Asia's No. 3 economy.

India is also a democracy where regime changes are brought about by general elections that are said to be of the largest scale in the world.

There is tremendous significance in strengthening ties with this country, which is expected to keep growing, has values similar to Japan's, and with which Japan has had no disputes over territory or perceptions of history.

Japan and India have been working together since 2006 to build a "relationship of strategic cooperation" that promotes collaboration not only on bilateral issues, but also on global economic and other issues that affect the entire world. Today, India is the biggest recipient of Japanese yen loans. And along with China, India is where Japan is making the heaviest direct investments.

However, Japan's trade with India is only one-25th of that with China, Japan's No. 1 trading parter. In other words, Japan's economic relationship with India is still weak. In terms of human exchanges, too, Indian students studying in Japan are still outnumbered 150 to 1 by their Chinese counterparts.

The EPA will eliminate more than 90 percent of trade-hampering tariffs over a period of 10 years. It will also stimulate the movement of people and intellectual property. We hope Japan's relationship with India will grow into one of strategic value.

China has been asserting to neighboring countries its ownership of various islands. In the same manner, China is claiming ownership of territory along the Indian border, where the two countries clashed in 1962. China, furthermore, is providing military aid and nuclear cooperation to Pakistan--with which India has major issues--and flexing its muscle around the Indian Ocean by assisting Sri Lanka and Myanmar (Burma) in their port and harbor development projects.

Yet, China is India's top trading partner, and we cannot ignore the depth of their mutual reliance.

Before his Japan trip, Prime Minister Singh showed consideration for Japan's position by stating that a prosperous community, in which Japan, India and China participate actively, is what should be aimed for in Asia. In this sense, we welcome the fact that Singh and Kan concurred that engaging China in "more productive and open dialogue" is the best means for resolving any territorial dispute with the country.

The important thing is that the reinforcement of cooperation between Japan and India must strengthen peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region and promote regional economic integration while not making other nations apprehensive or suspicious.

In this sense, a Japan-India nuclear cooperation agreement, for which Kan and Singh agreed to expedite negotiations, is of significance. Such an agreement will enable Japanese corporations to advance into India's mammoth nuclear power generation market. But we must not forget that India armed itself with nuclear weapons without joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

We need to seek a solution that will not harm the NPT framework.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 27