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| India, Japan to launch strategic economic dialogue in July | | |
NEW DELHI, MAY 14
Giving a new dimension to their bilateral ties, India and Japan today decided to launch strategic economic dialogue in July to sharpen focus on specific economic collaboration projects and agreed to ease visa requirements for businessmen and tourists.
The two sides also decided to hold in the same month "substantive discussions" in five working groups set up on high-level energy dialogue, External Affairs ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told reporters.
During the foreign office consultations between visiting Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon here, the Japanese proposal for establishment of a joint strategic dialogue group was agreed to by India.
This will be first at the official level and, depending upon the progress, taking it to other levels.
The two sides announced setting up of a "Mentor's Group", comprising international academic figures, to take further Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intention to make Nalanda University "an institute of excellence".
The two sides also agreed to enhance people-to-people contact in terms of increasing students exchanges from both countries and easing visa regulations for the tourists and businessmen.
Sarna said the two sides will also cooperate in science and technology, particularly in the fields of cutting edge technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and bioinformatics.
"They form very important aspect of the science and technology part of strategic and global partnership," he said.
Japanese side also made a proposal to start a "Japan Indian Strategic Dialogue Group" which would discuss the broad policy issues. This was accepted by the Indian side.
Two key projects that came for discussion between Japan and Indian were the "Dedicated Freight Corridor Project" and "Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor."
The spokesman said on both projects there is a considerable progress at the Indian side and on the industrial corridor project the government was close to finalising a "concept paper" which will be presented to the Japanese side soon.
Referring to strategic and global partnership between the two countries, the Japanese minister described Singh's visit to Japan as "epoch meeting" and Menon said "this is the relationship for which the time has come."
"This was not just because of the strategic congruence but also because of lot of shared common interests and economic values," the spokesman said.
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