Japan PM cancels India trip amid tensions in Assam over citizenship bill
It’s not clear when the summit will happen
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cancelled his trip to India scheduled to begin on Sunday.
India's Guwahati, the planned venue for India-Japan annual summit between Abe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been engulfed in violent protests over a controversial citizenship law.
The meeting had been deferred to a "mutually convenient date in the near future,'' reports The Times of India.
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This is the second major fallout of developments in the past few days related to Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was approved by the Indian Parliament earlier this week, after two senior Bangladeshi ministers called off their visit to India on December 12.
There was speculation that the summit could be shifted to Delhi, but official sources said there was never any plan to shift the venue. "The simple reason for that is that it would have been impossible to work out the logistics for a summit of this nature at any other place, including Delhi, at such a short notice,'' said a government source.
A Japanese delegation had to call off its visit to Guwahati on Thursday and Indian government officials who had arrived in Guwahati early for the summit remained holed up in a hotel as protesters resorted to violence in the city.
On December 11, protesters pulled down hoardings erected in central Guwahati to welcome Abe. At least two persons were killed on December 12 after police opened fire on protesters in Guwahati.
The government was left with no choice but to defer the summit after Japan conveyed to Indian authorities that it wouldn't be possible for Abe to travel to Guwahati in these circumstances. The summit would have allowed Modi and Abe to take stock of bilateral ties and build upon the first India-Japan ministerial 2+2 dialogue last month here.
While the summit, as officials said, had only been postponed, it's not clear when it will happen.
The 2020 summit, sources said, will take place late next year in Japan. If the two leaders do have another bilateral summit meeting before that, they would ideally want considerable gap between the two meetings.
