India, Japan discuss defence ties, amid rising tension in region

The Dollar Business Bureau

Amidst increasing tensions in the Asian region, India and Japan are having discussions to strengthen military partnership.

Arun Jaitley, Defence Minister of India conveyed to the Japan’s Defence Minister, Tomomi Inada, on Monday that India hopes to follow a strategic cooperation with Japan for stability and peace in the region.

Jaitley’s visit to Tokyo comes at a time when tensions are rising in the region that includes territorial conflict in the South China Sea and threats of missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.

The Indian Defence Minister welcomed a trilateral naval exercise planned with India, Japan and the US in July as a way to strengthen cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

“This is all reflective of the level of cooperation our armed forces have with each other,” he said.

Jaitley said that his country is looking at Japan’s technology for locally manufacturing defence equipment.

“Japan has a lot of defence technologies and India, of course, has great use of these technologies because we are attempting to have local manufacturing in India,” he said.

Jaitley, also the finance minister, was on a three-day visit to Japan for attending a yearly meeting of Asian Development Bank (ADB) that ended on Sunday.

India and Japan have been strengthening defence cooperation amidst rising assertiveness of China in the region.

For a long time, China has been cautious of the joint naval exercises between the US and India. Japan, a strong ally of the US that hosts around 50,000 troops of America, has in the past few years developed cooperation with several other nations that include Australia, Britain, France and the Philippines.