Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 30

Meeting for the first time in a new format, India and Japan set the stage for a summit meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe after a fortnight by resolving to further advance bilateral security cooperation, quickly seal a pact that would permit military vessels to use each other’s ports and conduct cooperative research in emerging areas of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) and robotics.

The first-ever meeting of Defence and Foreign Ministers of both countries also reached common ground on the maritime domain around China as well as issues of top security concerns to them – Pakistan and North Korea. Significantly, the meeting took place just two weeks before the Modi-Abe annual summit in India. Japan has several such 2+2 meetings but India has this arrangement only with the US.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, met their counterparts Kono Taro and Motegi Toshimitsu, respectively, for over an hour.

A joint statement after the meeting noted the threat posed to regional security by terrorist networks operating out of Pakistan and asked it to take resolute and irreversible action against them and fully comply with its commitments, including to FATF.

India returned the favour by agreeing in the joint statement to condemn North Korea’s recent launches of ballistic missiles which are “a clear violation” of the relevant UNSC resolutions.

Leaving no doubt about their partnership in the maritime domain, the four Ministers said further strengthening of bilateral cooperation was in the mutual interest of both countries. They planned to further promote cooperation in the field of capacity building in maritime security and maritime domain awareness, including through “cooperation with other countries.”

On bilateral defence cooperation, the accent continued to be on joint operations with the joint statement green lighting the first India-Japan joint fighter aircraft exercise to be held in Japan.

The sense of the joint statement was that while both sides have made considerable progress in achieving interoperatability between the armed forces, progress has been slow on the transfer of technology, joint production and the promised economic partnership in the north east. There was no mention of the long-pending sale of US2 amphibian aircraft to India, the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Earlier the two visiting Japanese Ministers called on PM Narendra Modi who expressed his satisfaction over the 2 plus 2 meeting that was decided by him and his Japanese counterpart at their last annual summit in October 2018 to further deepen bilateral strategic, security and defence cooperation. He added that Japan was a key component of India’s Act East Policy as well as the vision of a Indo-Pacific for peace, stability and prosperity of the region.