Tokyo set to arm twist Delhi over n-deal

New Delhi: India's attempts to bring about a harmonious end to its isolation in the civil nuclear arena still has some distance to go as evident from the latest hurdle thrown up in Japan. Under some domestic pressure, Tokyo has apparently conveyed to Delhi that the non-proliferation commitments it has made to Washington under the Indo-US 123 agreement may not be enough for it to resume nuclear trade with India.

The markers it has set for such trade to resume are so high that Delhi will find it impossible to acquiesce.

The fresh hurdle has arisen after this year's Nagasaki Declaration in Japan specifically criticises the Japanese government for launching negotiations with India.

Issued by the city's Mayor on 9August to mark the dropping of the atom bomb on the city at the end of WWII the Nagasaki Declaration also criticises the Japanese governments of the past for the ''secret nuclear pact'' with the United States.

This is what the Nagasaki mayor had to say on 9 August: ''''We harbour profound distrust of the government's past responses that have turned the three Non-Nuclear Principles into a mere formality. Moreover, the government has recently been promoting negotiations on a nuclear agreement with India, a non-NPT member country with nuclear weapons. This means that a nation that has suffered atomic bombings itself is now severely weakening the NPT regime, which is beyond intolerable.''

Beyond the declaration, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also met the Japanese PM and asked him to call off talks with India unless it joins the NPT.