India and Japan held the second round of talks here on Friday for a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement that will pave the way for sale of technology by Japanese companies or joint ventures. The first round of the talks was held on June 28 in Tokyo.
The latest round of talks comes days ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Japan later in October.
He is expected to travel to Japan and Malaysia for bilateral visits and Vietnam for the 8th Asean-India summit.
Tokyo has maintained that neither side should insist on a deadline for the talks to conclude, indicating that the pact might not materialise in time for the Prime Minister’s visit.
The India-Japan atomic pact is an essential prerequisite for the Japanese companies and Japanese joint ventures with American firms to engage in nuclear commerce with India.
The American companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse will not be able to enter the multi-billion-dollar Indian nuclear energy market because they are either partly or wholly owned by Japanese companies. So the US-Japanese consortium of GE-Hitachi or the Toshiba-owned Westinghouse will need to wait for Tokyo to conclude the bilateral nuclear pact with New Delhi before they can begin supplying equipment or technology for reactors in India.
The India and the Japanese negotiating teams are understood to be working on the language of the draft agreement that will best reflect Tokyo’s non-proliferation commitments.
In August, during the then Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada’s visit here, it was conveyed to New Delhi that Tokyo will be forced to suspend the bilateral accord if India were to conduct a nuclear test.