NEW DELHI : India has not sought a "commitment" or "comments" from Japan on the subject of civilian nuclear cooperation since views on the issue were still evolving, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Tokyo from December 13 to 16.

Dr. Singh, who will be in Cebu city in the Philippines from December 11 to 13 to attend the Fifth India-ASEAN and Second East Asian Summits, will have the rare privilege of addressing the Japanese Parliament (Diet) on December 14.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Mr. Menon said that there had been a "marked upturn" in Indo-Japanese relations even though two-way trade in 2005-06 remained at a modest $6 billion. The trade relationship, he admitted, was way below potential.

There was a "positive political ambience" in both countries to take forward the bilateral relationship. Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been extremely positive about building relations with India.

India and Japan, Mr. Menon said would be "two key anchors" in an emerging Asian era and was hopeful that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Japan would lead to substantive outcomes.

"Structured discussions"

The Foreign Secretary maintained that India and Japan had agreed to "structured discussions" in the defence field in May this year when the then Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, travelled to Tokyo.

Already, the coast guards of the two countries were holding annual exercises and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two had been agreed upon last month.

On trade and economic relations, Mr. Menon said that a joint task force had submitted its recommendations to the two governments and Dr. Singh and Mr. Abe would discuss these during their December 14 meeting in Tokyo. Officials on the two sides had "processed" these recommendations and it would be up to the two Prime Ministers to take the process forward.

Briefing presspersons on the ASEAN and East Asia Summit meetings, Secretary (East) Neelakantan Ravi said the India-ASEAN summit would involve a "review" of the relationship.

"Long and hard"

Conceding that the still-to-be-concluded negotiations on an India-ASEAN free trade agreement had proved to be "long and hard", Mr. Ravi stated that both sides wanted to "cover" their interests.

The idea was for the two sides to agree on a framework that would allow their trade relationship to grow over the next 10-20 years. India-ASEAN trade had grown from $2.3 billion in 1990-91 to $21 billion in 2005-06, Mr. Ravi pointed out.

On the East Asia Summit, he said leaders of the 16 nations were expected to issue a joint declaration on energy security.

The meeting was also expected to take forward the discussions held at the First East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur last year.

The leaders were expected to focus their collective efforts on developing renewable energy, including clean coal technology, Mr. Ravi added.

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