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India, Japan have left problems behind: PM

Observing that "transient aberrations" in Indo-Japanese relations had been put behind, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday underlined the need for extending the multifaceted relationship beyond the governments of the two countries.

"Our common interests far outweighs our differences. The relationship between Asia's most important democracies is too important to be predicated on any single issue," Vajpayee said at a meeting with Japanese parliamentarians in Tokyo.

The prime minister noted that for most of the 50 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Japan had extended generous economic assistance to a number of India's developmental projects.

"Some wrinkles have occasionally marred the smoothness of this picture....more recently, there was a brief hiatus in some segments of our relationship. From the time perspective of our ancient civilisations, there were merely transient aberrations. They are fortunately behind us," he said.

The prime minister said in the recent past, the two countries had disagreed on the nuclear tests conducted by India in 1998.

"We have profound respect for the Japanese people's sentiments, shaped by the enormous human tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he said.

Vajpayee told the Japanese legislators that the Indian Parliament paid homage to the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on every anniversary. "Eventually, our divergences are merely on a section of the path towards an identical goal," he said.

Referring to the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, he said this again emphasised the need for pluralistic democracies like India and Japan to "close ranks to protect our way of life against bigotry and intolerance".

"Our security cooperation, protection of our common commercial sea lanes and our alliance against international terrorism acquire heightened importance," he said.

The prime minister said the issues arising from the Doha WTO meet raised another set of concerns about globalisation accentuating socio-economic disparities and marginalising the least developed countries.

He said given India's development experiences and Japan's longstanding tradition of assistance to developing countries, New Delhi and Tokyo could together make a valuable contribution to a global dialogue for development.

"Economic cooperation has to be one of the most important pillars of the India-Japan partnership in the 21st century," he said, adding that his government had framed a new policy to enhance profitability of foreign investment in roads, telecommunications, ports and power.

PTI

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