Japan refused on Wednesday to acknowledge India as a legitimate nuclear weapons state and demanded that it join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki also urged India to drop its nuclear arms, denying a newspaper report Wednesday that Tokyo was thinking of accepting India's possession of such weapons.
"Japan and the global community have valued the international system of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation based on the NPT," he said. "We'll continue to seek the admission of India into the NPT as a nonnuclear weapons state." Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna declined comment.
Shiozaki said Tokyo will carefully study details of the U.S.-India nuclear pact signed in December, in which Washington agreed to supply the Indian nuclear power industry with fuel and technology, exempting it from a U.S. law that bans nuclear trade with countries that have not submitted to full international inspections of their atomic facilities.
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