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NEW DELHI: The day-long visit to India by Japanese PM Fumio Kishida will provide an opportunity to both countries to discuss how G20 and G7 can work together to handle critical global issues including food and health security, energy transitions and economic security, sources said ahead of his arrival on Monday. India and Japan currently hold the presidencies of G20 and and G7, respectively.
Kishida will hope to more than make up for the absence of his foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi from the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in India earlier this month.
While the Ukraine issue will again figure prominently in Kishida’s agenda for the meeting with his counterpart Narendra Modi, the focus will also be on enhancing security and defence cooperation and working towards a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific.
Kishida hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday for a bilateral summit that saw both leaders welcoming International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both India and the US are not members of the Court though, and the ICC warrant is unlikely to come in the way of Putin’s participation in G20 and SCO summits that India will host later this year.
“Defence and security cooperation has emerged as one of the most important pillars of our special strategic and global partnership and an important factor in ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” a source said. Kishida is expected to talk about ways to further expand Japan’s free and open Indo-Pacific policy. “The successful conduct of first fighter jet exercise ‘Veer Guardian’ in January 2023 in Japan between our two countries was a milestone,” added the official.

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