Osaka (Japan), : India and Japan on Thursday broadly agreed in principle to work on joint projects in third countries and especially in the neighbourhood such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
“Both the leaders felt we should jointly do projects in third countries…..countries have not been identified but one country is Sri Lanka and we would like to see whether we can do work in countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh,” Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held delegation level talks with his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe.
Mr Gokhale said as such the issue of Indo Pacific is also an issue of connectivity and said a ‘direction’ has been set by both the leaders for the officials in India and Japan to take the process forward.
India is looking forward to the launch of a new initiative on disaster management.
Essentially the new mechanism will look into aspects of disasters as short period relief is extended after some calamity, but smaller countries are then left to fend for themselves. But the new initiative will be to rebuild the infrastructure with the help of a coalition of countries to help such smaller nations, he said.
The proposed initiative will not compete with the UN system, he said adding Prime Minister felt this is an area India with the experience of handling disasters, can deal with.
The Prime Minister approached Japan for its support during the bilateral engagements today and would raise it with other leaders also.
There was a brief discussion on Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed railway as well as the convention centre in Varanasi.
“Both Prime Ministers would meet again on Friday for a trilateral meeting between Japan, India and US (under JAI frameowork) and there was a brief discussion on the Indo-Pacific initiative that all three countries are separately pursuing and discussing together.
“It was a very warm meeting, both leaders are old friends. They had a very constructive and detailed discussion on the bilateral relationship,” Mr Gokhale said.
UNI.
