Speaking at length on the eve of the visit by External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Japan on November 23 the first by an Indian foreign minister in four years Japanese ambassador to India Hiroshi Hirabayashi, told The Indian Express that Tokyo is no longer insistent on India ratifying the CTBT. A mere signature would be enough.

``We used to say earlier (after the nuclear tests) that India should sign and ratify the CTBT,'' Hirabayashi said, adding, ``but now I would like to say nothing about ratification. Now we want India to sign. Then many things will change.''

For a start, the Japanese envoy said, Tokyo would not only ask the G-8 to waive the sanctions on multilateral loans imposed after the tests, but also revive its own aidprogramme. The Overseas Development Assistance to India, which amounts to a $1 billion average annually, went into deep freeze when New Delhi went nuclear.

``If India signs the document, all these sanctions will disappear. It is in India's interest to do so. We will say (to the G-8), let's end this,'' he said. Japan, he added, had been ``very reluctant'' to impose the sanctions in the first place.

Hirabayashi also pointed out -- perhaps in compensation for the fact that Tokyo was one of the last countries to admit that Pakistani soldiers, not the ``mujahideen'', were fighting Indian soldiers at Kargil -- that Japan was now taking a much harder line on the military coup in Pakistan.

Sahibzada Yakub Khan, Gen. Musharraf's personal envoy in Tokyo last week, Hirabayashi said, had been told outright to not only ``restore democracy and show us a concrete time-frame when you are doing so,'' but also work for the restoration of dialogue with India by ``reviving the Lahore process.''

Attempting to assuage NewDelhi, the Japanese envoy explained that the CTBT had been reduced to mere ``symbolic'' importance. That is why, he added, both countries ``should not allow the nuclear issue to hijack our relations.''

He said his government hoped Jaswant Singh would tell Tokyo that India would attempt building the ``largest possible consensus'' in favour of signature, either at the next parliament session or otherwise.

Under the circumstances, Tokyo's almost desperate plea for India to sign, and not ratify the CTBT, is an enormous climbdown from the moralistic posture it adopted after the tests, along with the rest of the Western world.Foreign policy analysts say the significantly milder position is a direct consequence of New Delhi's decision to hold out in the face of sanctions on multilateral loans. India has also refused to ask Japan to lift its bilateral economic measures, arguing that it is up to Tokyo to decide what it wants to do with its money.

Japan also seems to be hoping that an Indian CTBT signature willenable it, the only country in the world to have been a victim of the nuclear bomb, to save enough face so that it can pursue its high moral posture on nuclear issues at home and abroad. During the interview, the Japanese ambassador spoke openly, and with regret, about the growing misunderstanding on both sides on a range of issues from non-proliferation to the coup in Pakistan to Kargil that in the last 18 months had threatened to engulf the relationship. ``The Americans speak differently...We may be too honest. We should have been a diplomatic or a political animal,'' he said.