 India agrees to long-term supply of rare earths for JapanTokyo (AFP) Oct 26, 2010 - Tokyo said Tuesday that India has agreed to provide a stable supply of rare earth minerals to Japan as the high-tech economy looks to diversify sources after a spat with key provider China. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who wound up his three-day visit to Japan on Tuesday, made the pledge during talks with the Japanese side on Monday, industry minister Akihiro Ohata said at a news conference. "Prime Minister Singh told us that he will cooperate in long-term supply of rare earth minerals," Ohata said, according to a trade ministry official. On Monday, Singh met Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Ohata and other Japanese officials and agreed to broadly cooperate in rare earth deals. In a statement, the premiers "decided to explore the possibility of bilateral cooperation in development, recycling and re-use of rare earths and rare metals and in research and development of their industrial substitutes." On Sunday, Ohata met China's commerce minister in Tokyo and urged Beijing to normalise rare earth exports after Japan said shipments were blocked during a diplomatic row sparked by the arrest of a Chinese trawlerman in disputed waters. Japan's stockpile of rare earth minerals, used in the manufacture of high-tech goods, could be exhausted by March or April without fresh imports from China, officials have said. China, which controls more than 95 percent of the global market, has repeatedly denied it curbed exports in retaliation over the dispute, but all 31 Japanese companies handling the minerals have reported disruption to shipments. Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said Tuesday that he wants to raise the issue if he meets his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of a 16-nation Asian summit in Vietnam later this week. |
"This is going to become a very, very difficult problem if we don't find a way out," De Gucht told an EU-China conference in Brussels.
He insisted that a string of mine closures elsewhere was "very closely linked to the price policy of rare earths by China" and stressed: "I think we should come to a global understanding."
The United States and Australia have 15 and five percent respectively of global reserves, but stopped mining them mainly because of cheaper Chinese competition.
"It cannot be a (Chinese) tool in industrial policy, because that would have very large ramifications," De Gucht warned, fresh from an EU-China summit that broke down amid fears of a "war" on currency exchanges.
"It's obvious that we cannot continue being completely dependent on China," he underlined.
The EU and Washington are already pursuing China in the World Trade Organization over policies on other raw materials, and a European source did not rule out similar action eventually on rare earths, depending on how that case progresses.
The United States has also said it will raise the rare earths issue at the summit of Group of 20 major and emerging nations in South Korea next month.
China recently imposed restrictions on exports of rare earths in what experts say is a bid to maximise profit and strengthen its homegrown high-tech companies.
Last year, it produced 97 percent of the global supply of rare earths, although it is home to just a third of reserves.
China's commerce ministry has said it reserves the right to slash rare earths exports again to "protect exhaustible resources and sustainable development".
Tokyo said on Tuesday that India had agreed to provide a stable supply of rare earth minerals to Japan as the high-tech economy looks to diversify its sources.
De Gucht worries that the rare earths row is just one of many "hints that China is developing an industrial policy aiming at transferring as much as possible production to China".
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