POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Japan Dangles Aid Carrot for CTBT Signature

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 25 2000 (IPS) - The one constant refrain through Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s South Asia tour, which ended Friday, was his urging nuclear rivals Pakistan and India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

“Japan is obsessed with the nuclear issue,” says Toshio Yamanouchi, a Japanese scholar in his book ‘India through Japanese Eyes.’

Mori lived up to that assessment, praising Bangladesh, where he began the tour on Aug. 19, for being the only South Asian country to sign the CTBT.

Political analysts noted that this is why the Japanese prime minister ‘showered’ Dhaka with credits worth 151 million U.S. dollars to finance power and infrastructure projects.

Tokyo is already Bangladeshs biggest donor, giving about 180 million dollars in annual aid to one of the world’s poorest nations.

In the past 10 years, Japanese companies have invested more than half a billion dollars in Bangladesh. Another 340 million dollars worth of investment is in the pipeline.

Mori’s next stop in Pakistan on Aug. 20, was distinctly cooler. Before leaving, he extracted a promise from military ruler Pervez Musharraf that Islamabad would not break a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests.

But Musharraf was reported to have told Mori privately, during half-a-day of engagements, that Pakistan would respond if India, which is also under a self-imposed nuclear testing moratorium, were to break it.

Japan led the rich nations in cutting off aid to India and Pakistan after their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998. The economic sanctions had severely affected Pakistan’s economy.

Mori refused to lift the sanctions till Pakistan signs the CTBT, but agreed to consider additional loans for the suspended Kohai road- tunnel project in the North West Frontier Province.

At a luncheon meeting in Mori’s honour, Musharraf described the sanctions as “unfair and unjustified” and hoped the visit would lead to a restoration of economic assistance.

The India leg of Mori’s tour, which lasted a full four days, focussed on India’s booming information technology (IT) sector. Mori and the 80 top Japanese businessmen with him, spent two days in the southern city of Bangalore, which is now a major global IT hub.

In New Delhi, Mori was almost apologetic about urging India to sign the CTBT. He wanted Indian leaders to understand “the sentiments of Japanese people who solely experienced the disaster of atomic bombs in the world.”

“We have demanded nuclear disarmament in the nuclear weapon states and have continued our diplomatic efforts to ensure effective control of weapons of mass destruction, disarmament and non-proliferation,” Mori told a business conference in the capital.

India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, which ordered the May 1998 nuclear tests, says it is ready to sign the CTBT, but is waiting for all political parties in the country to give it the go ahead to do so.

Mori said he expected “India’s early signature to the CTBT in order that we can take initiatives together for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and further promote our amicable relations.”

India, with its far larger and more diversified economy, did not feel the impact of the sanctions as much as Pakistan, and New Delhi made a point of not insisting too much that Japan lift them.

Commented the ‘Times of India’ newspaper in an editorial Friday: “As Asian powers, India and Japan have a lot in common and there is virtually no strategic conflict of interest between the two.”

“Given the rising status of China as an economic and military player, it is inevitable that New Delhi and Tokyo should seek to ensure that the balance of power remains stable,” it added.

Like U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was in South Asia in March, Mori displayed a new and distinct tilt toward India over the Kashmir issue, blaming Pakistan for last year’s undeclared Kargil war.

Referring to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s landmark peace journey to Pakistan in February 1999, Mori said: “the fighting that broke out in Kargil betrayed Mr. Vajpayee’s good intentions.”

He said precisely what Indian leaders wanted to hear: “I emphasised to Gen. Musharraf the need to take steps for an early return to democracy, to control terrorism and to create an environment conducive to the resumption of dialogue with India.”

Mori rounded off his South Asia tour with a day-long trip Friday to Nepal, making him the first Japanese prime minister to visit the land-locked Himalayan kingdom sandwiched between India and China.