NEW DELHI, May 31: Japanese Senior Vice-Foreign Minister Seiken Sugiura met Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh Friday as part of ongoing diplomatic efforts to calm tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, officials here said.

“Sugiura had a very productive meeting with the Indian foreign minister which lasted for nearly 40 minutes,” an Indian foreign ministry official said.

“He tried to assure India that President Pervez Musharraf was aware of the fact that India’s patience was running thin,” he said after the talks.

The envoy stressed that the two rivals “needed to be very responsible and abstain from trading nuclear threats during these testing times.”

He also warned against the terrible consequences of a nuclear conflict, the official said.

As the only country ever to suffer nuclear attack, Japan, has also repeatedly called on India and Pakistan to sign the global Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Singh offered the Japanese envoy an assurance that India was not pursuing “nuclear escalation or proliferation, but a strategy of deterrence alone.”

Sugiura reached New Delhi from Islamabad Thursday and met India’s National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra.

Sugiura said in Islamabad on Wednesday that Pakistan had assured him it would step up efforts to curb cross-border infiltration into Indian-held Kashmir state. In Islamabad, he also called for “concrete” efforts by Pakistan to stop such incursions in Kashmir to end the military stand-off with India.—AFP