Last week's visit to Japan by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is an important step forward in the long-delayed process of creating a durable and forward-looking relationship between two Asian powers. Japan and India are natural partners, whose relationship is based on shared interests, values and concerns. The relationship will not be friction free, but if the two countries focus on the things that they can accomplish together, they will be able to achieve a truly strategic partnership.

While there are long-standing ties between Japan and India, official relations were frustrated by the Cold War -- in which Japan aligned with the West while India championed the nonaligned movement and sometimes backed the Soviet line -- and, more recently, its determination to become a nuclear power. Fortunately, the two countries recognized that those issues could be better dealt with within a positive and cooperative relationship.

Thus, in 2000 then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori established a Global Partnership on his visit to Delhi, and during last year's visit to India by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi the two sides agreed to reinforce the strategic orientation of that partnership. Last week, Mr. Singh and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to establish a "Strategic and Global Partnership" that "involves closer political and diplomatic coordination on bilateral, regional, multilateral and global issues, comprehensive economic engagement, stronger defense relations, greater technological cooperation as well as increased cultural ties, educational linkages and people-to-people contacts."