Ranjit Devraj:

Hounded by China over its imperial record during World War II, Japan is rediscovering India as a “strategic partner” and one which it can also do business with. “Japan and India need each other more than ever in order to grow and prosper,” said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi after releasing a joint statement with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on Friday.

The title of the joint-statement “India-Japan Partnership in the New Asian Era: Strategic Orientation of India-Japan Global Partnership,” seemed to say it all. Koizumi’s two-day trip that ended on Saturday was on the heels of the Apr. 9-12 visit by China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who used the occasion to declare Beijing’s opposition to Japan’s candidature for permanent membership in the UN Security Council while simultaneously backing India’s case. Along with Brazil and Germany, India and Japan are part of the ‘G-4’ group of countries that aspire permanent membership with veto powers in the Security Council, as part of the proposed UN reforms. On Friday, Japan and India agreed to help each other’s bids for a place on the UN Security Council “I recognize that India is eme-rging as a global power aided by robust economic growth and that it has become a major country essential for peace, stability and prosperity of Asia and beyond,” said Koizumi in an interview to the The Hindu daily. Both Tokyo and New Delhi said they “reiterated their support for each other’s candidature, based on the firmly shared recognition that Japan and India are legitimate candidates for permanent membership in an expanded Security Council.”

It took more than half-a-century after the end of the war for Japan to rediscover India as a strategic partner. Tokyo soon began to make overtures to break the trade deadlock between the two nations, which seemed stagnated at four billion US dollars for the past six years.

During Premier Wen’s visit, much was made of India’s annual trade growth with China. It now stands at 14 billion dollars. To be fair to Tokyo, one of the reasons for the stagnation in Indo-Japanese economic ties has been Japan’s discomfort at nuclear tests carried out by India in 1988.

To the delight of both sides, that unpleasant episode seems to have been put behind and Koizumi in his interview with ‘The Hindu’ said that after all, Japan and India did “share the ultimate goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons.” According to Zuberi, it is highly probable that Japan, a long-term U.S. ally is cooperating with Washington in a new initiative to build closer ties with India in response to China’s growing influence.

Friday’s joint-statement provided for annual prime minister-level meetings between the two countries and regular ministerial exchanges with the emphasis on improving energy security and increasing investment in Asian energy markets. Japan would now provide assistance to large-scale infrastructure projects in India including a high-speed, computerised freight train that would connect port cities of Mumbai on the west coast with Kolkata in the Bay of Bengal. The two countries also agreed on a maritime security accord where Japan would help India modernise its navy in return for protection of its merchant vessels plying through the Straits of Malacca. — IPS