India in talks with Japan for fresh summit dates

New Delhi: After cancellation of its annual summit with Japan that was to have been held in Guwahati, India on Thursday expressed confidence that the new dates for the summit would be “finalised very soon” in consultation with the Japanese side.

It may be recalled that due to the violent protests that rocked Assam in December due to the CAA controversy, India had last month announced cancellation of its annual summit with Japan that was to have been held in Guwahati from December 15 to 17. With that, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s scheduled visit to India for the summit had also then been cancelled. While the dates had then been officially announced by India, Guwahati had never been announced as the venue officially although preparations had been made to hold it there.  

On Thursday, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, “We are in touch with the Japanese side through diplomatic channels. We do hope that very soon, we will come to the finalisation of the date. It is an annual mechanism, the Summit that was supposed to be held in December, that is the one that is getting postponed. All these matters will be in discussion with the Japanese side.”

Meanwhile, the MEA spokesperson also said that Australian PM Scott Morrison had been invited to India to address the Raisina Dialogue conference —-organised jointly every January by the MEA and private thinktank ORF — in the middle of this month. The MEA also said at least 10 foreign ministers of various countries had already confirmed participation to attend the Raisina Dialogue.