His address to the UN General Assembly and later to a select audience at the Asia Society has been so forthright that one will have to search hard to spot other comparable statements by Indian leaders.

According to Vajpayee, the full potential of Indo-US relations has not been realised largely because of the ``American reluctance to accept us as a responsible member of the international community.''

Consider the candour of this address to the Asia Society:

``Whether it is regional arrangements dealing with Afghanistan where we have vital security and other interest;whether it is cooperative arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region where we have a clearly positive, moderating and stabilising role to play; whether it is global organisations like the UN Security Council or the discriminatory Non-Proliferation Treaty; in all these the United States does not appreciate and accommodate India's interests and concerns.

``On South Asian issues, where our supreme national interests are involved, we encounter policy approaches from America that go contrary to our basic irreducible security means.''

First, the nuclear powers ``used the Cold War as a pretext for a costly arms race. Now, even though the Cold War is over they have sought to perpetuate their hegemony through discriminatory non-proliferation treaties which are bound to fail.

``It is this hypocrisy and hegemony which forced India to rethink our nuclear policy. We were forced to exercise our nuclear option both for reasons of national security and as a powerful challenge to the practitioners of nuclear apartheid.With this firm action, we have reminded the nuclear club that the voice of one-sixth of the humanity cannot be ignored.''

Some of the most powerful voices in the American foreign policy establishment including senior State Department officials were present when that statement was made.

True, India's intention to sign the CTBT was made amply clear but conditions that interlocutors like the United States have to meet before the document is signed was also unambiguously stressed. Senior US officials were able to spot the artful construction of para 17 of the Prime Minister's UN speech.

The implications of this paragraph will be discussed in the coming weeks.

``India, having harmonised its national imperatives and security obligations and desirous of continuing to cooperate with the international community, is now engaged in discussions with key interlocutors on a range of issues, including the CTBT. We are prepared to bring these discussions to a successful conclusion, so that the entry into force ofthe CTBT is not delayed beyond September 1999. We expect that other countries, as indicated in Article 14 of the CTBT, will adhere to this treaty without conditions.''

Clearly, transfer of dual use technology, questions of deployment and missile testing and American ratification of CTBT are still to be resolved before India signs the document.

What people tend to remember are the harsh statements after India's nuclear tests. That negative element obscures the reality that within a month of the tests, the Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh series of talks were initiated. It was like an unspoken acceptance of the new South Asian reality.

France, of all the western nations, was from the very beginning the most understanding of India's compulsions for the nuclear tests. Recently, Laurent Fabius, former prime minister and Speaker of the French National Assembly, on a visit to New Delhi said it in so many words that India was undeniably a nuclear power. The reality had to be accepted.

Little wonder France was thefirst nuclear weapons power to invite the Prime Minister on a state visit. The atmospherics in his interaction with President Jacques Chirac exceeded all expectations. The institutionalisation of a strategic partnership between the two countries is designed to monitor a process that has for a long time remained only a huge promise. During his state visit to India in January, Chirac had talked of a strategic dialogue.

Now the process has been taken forward with Gerard Errera and Brajesh Mishra heading the two countries in giving the strategic partnership a new political and economic content.

So much has happened in the course of the Prime Minister's visit that the impatient may well inquire: But what is the substantive gain in a nutshell? Well, the post-Pokharan adjustments with the west are proceeding to our satisfaction. However, it must be remembered that the world is not coping only with the Indian reality in isolation. The South Asian reality is being negotiated. It is within this framework that onemust see the promise in the resumed dialogue with Pakistan. The success on this track will determine the post-Pokharan architecture in South Asia and India's place in the world.