On December 12, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo issued a Joint Statement with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announced that they had agreed in principle to conclude a bilateral agreement for cooperation in nuclear energy.

However, India is a nuclear country which in 1998 openly went nuclear by developing and testing nuclear weapons, and continues to refuse to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The government of the A-bombed Japan must not offer nuclear technology to such a country and give a helping hand to its development of nuclear weapons. The Japan-India nuclear agreement should not be signed.  

Furthermore, the accident of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant still has not been contained. Rather, there is no end in sight of the continuing disaster. It is an abominable act to export nuclear power plants by placing priority to the interests of big businesses.

It is also unacceptable that defining Japan-India relations as the “Strategic and Global Partnership” in the Joint Statement, the Japanese government is trying to help expand the U.S.-led military cooperation from the Asia-Pacific region to Indian Ocean, and further to promote Japan’s sales of military technology and weapons, capitalizing on the virtual scrapping of the “Three Principles on Arms Exports.”    

By its constitution, Japan has adopted a peaceful resolution of conflicts as its principle.  Now, diplomacy based on this principle is called for more than ever before.

The government of Japan must put an end to a dangerous military partnership which would promote nuclear proliferation, and commit to a diplomacy standing on its constitutional pacifism and a total ban on nuclear weapons.

Yasui Kazumasa (secretary general Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo)) - December 2015