U.S. sounds out Japan about security technology cooperation pact

TOKYO —

The United States has sounded out Japan about concluding a new pact on cooperation over national security technologies, including terrorism information exchanges and joint development of devices to detect dangerous materials, government sources said Thursday. The overture aims at cooperation not only in technological development but performance assessment and proof of the new technologies, the sources said.

The proposed pact would enable the United States to make use of Japanese technologies and allow Japan to have access to concrete information on the methods and type of explosives used in actual terrorist attacks, which have been kept confidential under current bilateral technological cooperation arrangements, they said.