Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that the extensive cooperation and stronger ties between India and Japan augurs well for both the countries and the entire world.

“Began the series of interactions in Osaka with an excellent meeting with my friend, PM Shinzo Abe. Our talks covered the full range of India-Japan relations. Extensive cooperation between India and Japan augurs well for the citizens of our countries and the entire world,” Prime Minister tweeted.
On his first day of Japan visit to attend the G20 Summit, Prime Minister held first bilateral meeting with his Japanese counterpart Mr Abe.

During the meeting, Mr Modi shared with Mr Abe his idea for the launch of a new initiative on disaster management at the global level especially for the poor and smaller countries.

Essentially the new mechanism will look into aspects of disasters as short period relief is extended after some calamity, but smaller countries are then left to fend for themselves. But the new initiative will be to rebuild the infrastructure with the help of a coalition of countries to help such smaller nations, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said later.

India and Japan also agreed in principle to work on joint projects in third countries and especially in the neighbourhood such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

“Both the leaders felt we should jointly do projects in third countries…..countries have not been identified but one country is Sri Lanka and we would like to see whether we can do work in countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh,” Mr Gokhale said.

“Expanding the strategic template of our relationship ​ PM Narendra Modi met Japanese PM Shinzo Abe ahead of the G20 Summit. Discussed broad range of topics of mutual interest. PM said that he was looking forward to visit of PM Abe to India later this year for the Annual Summit,” MEA spokesman Raveesh Kumar tweeted.