Mori expects India to sign the CTBT, resolve feud with Pak

He said by signing the treaty, which bans underground nuclear explosions, India would win respect and praise from the international community as a "responsible nation".

Mori, the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit India in a decade, held talks with his India counterpart Atal Behari Vajpayee on Wednesday. The two countries also launched a wide-ranging partnership and entered into a security dialogue.

India, which carried out a series of nuclear tests in May 1998, says it will sign the CTBT after domestic consensus is reached on the issue.

Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, was among the most critical of the Indian tests which were followed by a similar set of explosions by Pakistan. Mori said the nuclear tests by India came as a "bolt from the blue" for the Japanese people and Tokyo could not help but impose economic measures against the country.

He said despite the punitive measures, economic activity in the private sector, technical assistance, grant assistance for grassroots projects conducted by non-government organisations, emergency and humanitarian aid had continued unhindered.

Japan froze fresh yen loans to India after the May 1998 tests and imposed the same sanctions on Pakistan.

Meanwhile Mori condemned a spate of killings in India’s restive Jammu and Kashmir state and said efforts to resolve the problems through dialogue should not be abandoned.

He said during his visit to Pakistan he had urged the country’s Chief Executive, General Pervez Musharraf to control terrorism and create an environment conducive to the resumption of dialogue with India.

India says it will resume talks with Pakistan after the neighbour stopped giving support to guerrillas in Kashmir, a charge that Islamabad has consistently denied.

He said Japan had prepared a package of measures on information technology and will spend $15 billion over the next five years.

"Japan will take the lead in promoting the use ofinformation technology in developing countries through such measures, especially laying emphasis on Asia," Mori said.

He said Japan would soon announce the issue of multipleentry visas to stimulate exchanges with Indian Information Technology engineers.