WE can see the reasons why you've done it, but we can't accept or approve of it." So the former Japanese ambassador Noda told me, at the end of a discussion on India's nuclear tests with Asian security specialists whom I addressed at the International House of Japan. I was in Tokyo at the invitation of the Japanese foreign office, and specially the Japanese embassy, as part of efforts being made by the respective governments to get Indo-Japanese relations back to normalcy after the estrangement caused by the highly critical reaction of Japan's previous government, led by Prime Minister Hashimoto, to India's Pokhran tests. Japan was the most articulate and condemnatory critic of India at the G-8 Summit in Birmingham, held to discuss the implications of these tests. The country suspended all direct economic aid to India, refused to host the Aid India Consortium meeting scheduled to be held this summer in Tokyo, and opposed the aid coming to India from multilateral international financial institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Not only that, between May 13 and May 28, it diverted some of the assistance meant for India to Pakistan, hoping it might still persuade the latter country not to conduct nuclear tests. Japan also indicated an unwillingness to receive an Indian special envoy in June, stating that the Japanese public opinion would be in no mood to accept Indian explanations. The result: a break in communications with a country with which India has had the smoothest of political relations and long-standing fruitful economic cooperation.