Minority PM meets beleaguered PM

JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, August 21, 2007 : A beleaguered prime minister Manmohan Singh will cede the floor to Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe in a joint session of parliament tomorrow – and dearly hope the MPs will at least listen to him.

Fact is, Abe is almost as politically weak back home in Japan these days. About three weeks ago, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in Japan’s upper house of parliament over a pension scandal that has been raging in that country.

As a consequence, even the Japanese minority PM’s trip to India was in doubt.

But the redoubtable Abe clearly decided to grin and bear it. At stake was the offer of a ``strategic partnership’’ with India, with lots of money thrown in for a Mumbai-Delhi freight corridor, possible investment promises for the Calcutta metro and other projects nationwide.

The cherry on the cake? A path-breaking nuclear deal India had just pulled off with the US, a treaty ally of the Japanese. US president George Bush was to have been the invisible third man in all the photo-ops between Singh and Abe.

What a difference three weeks can make.

Manmohan Singh and Shinzo Abe will still smile and shake hands before the cameras, but it’s clearly not going to be the same thing. Most projects may even be publicly announced. In tomorrow’s photo-op, George Bush will still be the invisible third person, only this time neither leader is likely to publicly declare his friendship with America.

None other than a senior Japanese government official today conceded that this was a particularly trying period in the political lives of both leaders. The official would not come on record fearing possible diplomatic impropriety, that too in a foreign country.

``It is a fact that both leaders, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Abe face difficult political situations,’’ the senior Japanese official said.

However, he added, ``whatever political developments will emerge in Japan and India, we are confident that the agreements from the summit will be passed on to future governments.’’

That, of course, was a direct reference to the Indo-US nuclear deal being bitterly contested in parliament these days. Both Indian and Japanese diplomats as well as politicians concede that it is unheard-of for politicians like Yashwant Sinha of the BJP saying that if they came to power they would abrogate the deal signed by the UPA government.

Still, officials from both sides insist that in the talks between the two PMs tomorrow, however politically shaky their governments may be, India will ask for Japan’s support for the Indo-US pact at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting.

It is more than likely that Japan will give it.

The senior Japanese official pointed out that the nuclear issue remained a very sensitive subject back home, but Tokyo also understood India’s need for clean and assured supplies of energy for its galloping domestic needs and that nuclear energy was one answer.

Abe leaves for Calcutta on August 23 when he also meets the family of Radha Binod Pal, the only judge who gave a dissenting judgement at the Tokyo Tribunals after World War II, proclaiming the Japanese ``not guilty.’’

ENDS