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INDIA-JAPAN TIES

THE SWIFTNESS WITH which Japan has set about wooing the United Progressive Alliance Government is a measure of the importance it attaches to developing relations with India. The visit last week by the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, was her second in less than two years. India's political landscape has changed dramatically since her last call in January 2003. Japan evidently wants to gauge the thinking in the new Government on the bilateral relationship, which has only recently emerged from a phase of chill that followed India's nuclear explosions in 1998. Though both countries remain cautious, they have worked hard over the last four years to shepherd the relationship out of the woods. Japan realises that for a constructive diplomatic engagement, it must stop viewing India through the prism of Kashmir or nuclear proliferation issues. This has done much to free bilateral relations from the constraints that arose out of the constant need to appear balanced between India and Pakistan. In its own interests, Japan has been eager to build a strategic partnership with India. In this, the growing ties between China and India, and North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, have no doubt played an important role.

Although Japan, unlike China, finds no specific mention in the foreign policy section of the UPA's Common Minimum Programme, the new Government would like to build on the thaw. India's willingness to put behind it the irritants in its relations with Japan since 2000 is all the more important in the post-Iraq global context, in which new alliances are emerging to counter the unilateralism of the United States. The declaration by both countries at the end of Ms. Kawaguchi's visit that they will support each other's candidature for the United Nations Security Council "to enhance the effectiveness and credibility" of the U.N. is a reflection of this. Japan sees itself in the vanguard of the efforts to craft a new multilateralism and believes that its "soft power" is suited for such a role. It defended its decision to send troops to Iraq — a break from its self-imposed post-World War Two rule never to deploy its military on foreign soil — as a step towards crafting a multilateral resolution of the Iraq crisis. New Delhi has been prepared to accept Tokyo's desire to play a larger role on the international stage so long as Japan acknowledges India's own interests in this regard. Their cooperation in the proposed expansion of the Security Council should help hasten the long-envisaged reforms in the U.N. aimed at making it a truly representative international organisation.

An area of some concern is bilateral trade, which remains stagnant despite some high-profile Japanese investments in India, especially in the automobile industry. While trade between India and China has grown impressively and is expected to touch $10 billion this year, the India-Japan trade relationship has remained at less than half of that. One reason was of course the freeze in the relationship after Pokhran, but the "global partnership for the 21st century" that the two countries inaugurated in 2000 emphasised increasing economic collaboration, especially with the "unbounded opportunities" in the information technology sector. This has simply not happened. The visit by Japan's Ministers for Information Technology and for Economy, Trade and Infrastructure next month should help send out the right signals to both sides — and especially to Japanese business that has been cautious about investing in India — that the political leadership in Japan is serious about developing this aspect of the relationship.

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