Japan may lift sanctions on Pakistan, India

KAZUNORI TAKADA

TOKYO, SEPTEMBER 18: JAPAN said on Tuesday it may lift sanctions on Pakistan and India in support of the two countries’ efforts to cooperate with the United States to track down Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last week’s attacks on America.

Tokyo imposed the sanctions after the two countries carried out nuclear tests in 1998. “If Pakistan’s cooperation is real, we think we should give them a helping hand,” a foreign ministry official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. He added that Japan was also looking at the response from India, which has vowed support for Washington.

Tokyo was the biggest donor of foreign aid to Pakistan, having provided about 80 per cent of total bilateral assistance to Islamabad prior to the sanctions. In 1998, Pakistan and India declared unilateral moratoriums on nuclear testing after their test blasts in May that year triggered international economic sanctions. Japan froze all new loans and grants to Pakistan and India except humanitarian aid. Some officials in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party appeared reluctant to lift sanctions.

An LDP foreign affairs panel on Tuesday adopted a resolution to provide emergency humanitarian aid to the two countries, domestic media said. But the panel decided, at least for now, not to lift the sanctions.

Some lawmakers argued that sanctions should remain until the countries sign the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons, Jji news agency said. Most of the countries that imposed sanctions have already lifted them, with the United States and Japan the only ones keeping such restrictions. (Reuters)