"We are not at all disappointed (that Japan has not made a formal statement supporting the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation deal," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on board Air India 1, shortly after it had taken off from Tokyo's Haneda airport on Saturday signaling the end of his three-day state visit to Japan.
The Indian delegation, the PM indicated, had no intention of discussing the nuclear deal, in its specifics, with Japan during the visit.
"There is adequate appreciation of the fact that India needs nuclear power for its energy security, and I am convinced that when the time comes, Japan will be on our side. I had not come here to discuss these matters at any great length, and the Japanese sensitivities on matters relating to nuclear have to be respected because they are the only country in the world to have been devastated by atomic weapons, during the Second World War," Dr Singh said.
Responding to a question on why language specific to the International Atomic Energy Agency had found place in the Joint Statement, if specifics were not being discussed, Dr Singh said, "Our commitment with the United States is that the US government will seek a waiver from the US Congress and then the US will help and lobby for us in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group to modify their guidelines for cooperation with India.
"We have committed that we will have in place an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA. This is a commitment that is a public document, it was mentioned in the July 18 (2005) agreement (between Dr Singh and US President George W Bush) and that is what the prime minister (of Japan Shinzo Abe) was mentioning."
The two statements -- and that is all the PM said on the nuclear question during his 15 minute interaction with the media on board the flight back from Tokyo -- are the only public indications of what appears to be a calibrated private strategy the government is following.
In its interactions not only with Japan but other NSG members as well, India appears to be consciously focused on sensitising the respective nations to its energy requirements, without however seeking any sort of commitment just yet.
The likely reason is to avoid putting NSG member governments in a position where they are forced to take a stand, without having sufficient documentation on which to base that stand.
"Where is the question of asking for a commitment from anyone, forget Japan?" a member of the official delegation asked. "The US has passed a law enabling civilian nuclear cooperation with India, but that is US-centric, and there is nothing in there that other countries will want to comment about.
"The 123 Agreement has to be put in place, the safeguards agreement has to be negotiated with the IAEA, the question of relaxing guidelines has to be placed before the NSG -- it is only at that point that those countries will have something to actually take a position on, and that point will not come for some time now."
In the interim, the policy seems to be to focus on those aspects that NSG members will have no problems with; to, in keeping with time-honoured negotiating tactics, ask only those questions that will yield 'yes' answers.
Thus, India is the second fastest growing economy in the world, yes? Yes.
It needs huge additional inputs of energy to sustain, escalate, its impressive growth? Yes.
Nuclear energy is a key means of accelerating energy generation? Yes.
International diplomacy is obviously considerably more nuanced than the above examples indicate -- but when government officials at various levels talk, as the prime minister did the other day, of 'sensitising the Japanese to our concerns', these in simplified form are the arguments that find their way to the table.
The logical follow up question would be, do you then support India's nuclear programme but that, for now, is being left unvoiced.
An interesting sidelight to the Japan visit as relates to the nuclear question happened on December 15, just hours before the two prime ministers signed the Joint Statement.
The Indian media was told that the Japanese spokesperson would be holding a briefing -- an eyebrow-raiser, since it is almost unprecedented for the host nation to brief the visiting press ahead of the official function.
As it turned out, the briefing was on deep background, and totally off record; the over-arching theme was 'Guys, don't expect a nuclear 'bombshell' in the Joint Statement, that subject is not on the table just now.'
Indian government officials believe Japan resorted to this step to cool expectations among the Indian media, after noting the nuclear-centric headlines that had dominated much of media coverage in the build-up to the subject.
Japan evidently did not want expectations to be built -- the risk there being that if those expectations were not matched by the reality of the Joint Statement, it would cause a summit the Japanese government set much store by to be seen as a defeat, a perception the Japanese wanted to avoid.
The current status, officials say, is thus no more, no less, than what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in response to the only question asked of him after the signing of the joint statement:
"Prime Minister Singh has briefed us about India's energy needs, and I have told Prime Minister Singh about our sensitivities. Japan has not yet formulated its official policy on the question."
No more. And certainly no less. This, say officials, is all the progress they expected to make on the subject in course of this summit.
"I am certainly not disappointed," is how Dr Singh puts it.
