Japan's PM Shinzo Abe to visit India on Friday; Varanasi, Sarnath on agenda

New Delhi: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will arrive in New Delhi on Friday on a three-day visit to hold annual summit talks with Narendra Modi with a focus on forging greater synergies between two major Asian economies and take forward special strategic ties. In the 9th Annual Indo-Japan summit talks, Modi and Abe will review implementation of various decisions taken in the course of the last one year to enhance economic ties, particularly in the trade and investment sector. “The visit of Prime Minister Abe is for the Annual Summit meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” the External Affairs Ministry said. [caption id=“attachment_1803329” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Japanese PM Shinzo Abe shakes hand with PM Modi. File photo PTI[/caption] The summit meeting will be held on 12 December and Abe is likely to visit Varanasi, the Parliamentary constituency of Modi, on the same day. Modi will accompany Abe during his visit to Varanasi. Abe had accompanied Modi during his visit to Kyoto. During his visit, Abe is expected to go to the Buddhist site Sarnath and also attend the aarti on the banks of river Ganga. At the last Summit meeting held in Tokyo in 2014, the two prime ministers had agreed to elevate the relationship to “Special Strategic and Global Partnership”. Modi had visited Japan from 30 August to 3 September, 2014, during which that country had announced doubling of its private and public investment in India to about USD 34 billion over a period of five years. During the summit talks last year, Modi and Abe had agreed to enhance defence and strategic cooperation to a new level and also decided to speed up negotiations on civil nuclear deal. While agreeing on greater defence equipment and technology cooperation, the two sides had decided to expedite discussions on modalities for the sale of Japanese US-2 amphibian aircraft. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had held talks with top Japanese officials in Tokyo in November to finalise agenda and other details of Abe’s visit to India. India and Japan have been expanding their economic and strategic engagement in recent years resulting in cooperation in a vast swathe of fields including defence and security. The economic engagement witnessed significant rise after both countries signed a a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in 2011. PTI