A new defense deal between Japan and Australia would make it easier for troops from each nation to visit military bases of the other side, said  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese premier Yoshihide Suga. The two prime minister held a joint press conference during Morrison 's visit to Tokyo on Tuesday.

The deal, dubbed Reciprocal Access Agreement, would streamline cooperation for exercises and disaster relief missions, the leaders said.

Morrison called the deal a "landmark" development, and Suga described both nations as "special strategic partners" committed to realizing a "free and open Indo-Pacific."

Still pending is ratification of the bilateral pact by parliaments of both nations, which, during World War Two, fought bitterly across the western Pacific. 

Read more: Asia-Pacific nations create large free-trade zone

The Suga-Morrison encounter followed Sunday's signing of a major free trade pact, spanning 15 Asian-Pacific nations, including China and Australia, which relies on selling iron ore and coal to Beijing to fill its coffers. 

Without naming China explicitly, Suga and Morrison did, however express "serious concerns" about Chinese "militarization" across the South and East China Seas amid an array of maritime territorial disputes involving variously China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. 

'Quad' nations exercise navies

Their Tokyo talks coincided Tuesday with a distant naval exercise in the Northern Arabia Sea, involving so-called "Quad" nations, the USA, Australia, Japan and India. 

That naval drill, code-named "Malabar," was centered on India's Vikramaditya naval carrier group and the US navy's Nimitz carrier group, said India's Defense Ministry. 

China has decried the Quad as an "Asian NATO" contrived to counter China. 

Morrison, Suga want a 'zero emission future'

For Japan, the bilateral pact endorsed by Morrison in Tokyo, represents the first of its kind since 1960 when Japan and the USA agreed "status of forces" terms allowing about 50,000 American troops to be based for decades on Japanese islands, including Okinawa. 

Officially, Tokyo limits itself to self-defense and bans first strikes under is post World War Two pacifist constitution. 

Under Suga's predecessor Shinzo Abe, Japan hiked its defense role and spending and now ranks among the world's top 10, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Last April SIPRI ranked Australia 13th on military expenditure.

Morrison, on a two-day visit and the first foreign leader to meet Suga at home since he took office from Abe in September, said the pair had also agreed to tackle climate change by aiming for a "zero emission future." 

On defense, the two nations first entered into a cooperation agreement in 2007, agreed to share military supplies in 2013, expanded in 2017 to include munitions. 

ipj/dj (Reuters, AP, dpa)