New Delhi: Expected to take place earlier in April, five months later the stage is set for the India-Japan 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue next month when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Tokyo.
The two ministers will meet their Japanese counterparts, Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada and Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, on September 8, 2022. The focus of the talks is expected to further strategic cooperation in critical areas including joint exercises as well as joint development of different military platforms. The two sides will review the bilateral cooperation in various fields of defence and also discuss future cooperation between the two countries in emerging technologies, and development of military hardware.
The dialogue is taking place over five months after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited India for the annual India-Japan summit. At the summit in New Delhi, Kishida announced an investment target of five trillion Yen (Rs 3,20,000 crore) in India over the next five years.
The visit of Defence Minister Singh and External Affairs Minister Jaishankar will be three weeks ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Tokyo to attend the state funeral of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on September 27 in Tokyo. The visit comes after the recent Leaders’ Summit of the QUAD leaders in Tokyo, and the two ministers are expected to discuss not only regional but global issues of mutual interest. They will also talk about the ongoing tensions between China and Taiwan, Chinese bullying tactics in South and East China Sea as well its belligerence along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
India and Japan have in operation – a key agreement related to the reciprocal provision of supplies and services between the armed forces of both countries. Both sides will discuss ways of further building on the existing agreement. In September 2020 Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and India’s armed forces had inked the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA).
The first 2+2 dialogue between India and Japan was held in New Delhi in November 2019 to further deepen bilateral security and defence cooperation and bring greater depth to the special strategic and global partnership between the two countries. India has this mechanism of 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue with very few countries including the US, Russia, Australia and Japan.
