LONDON -- Here is a telling statistic about Japan's foreign policy that is little known in the West, and may not be widely known even in Japan itself.

Japan pays just under 20 percent of the whole United Nations budget -- 19.47 percent to be precise.

This is very much more than any other nation except the United States, and a visitor from outer space would assume that as such a major "shareholder" Japan would naturally have a key place on the "board" or executive body at the head of the U.N.

But the visitor would be quite wrong. Japan has no place on the inner ring of Permanent Security Council members, who call the shots, and its polite efforts to join the ruling group are bogged down in a long-running wrangle about who should be members of an enlarged Security Council and with what powers.

Somewhat ill-advisedly, or so it is felt by Japan's friends, the application strategy has been to link arms with India, Brazil and Germany, each of which feels that it, too, should be full and possibly permanent Security Council members.

Each of these other three countries comes with a lot of controversial baggage as they all line up to apply. India's application is immediately challenged by Pakistan; Brazil's role is questioned by the other major Latin American countries, like Argentina; and Germany's would-be membership is all bound up with the highly contentious question of whether the European Union as a whole should have a Security Council seat.

This means that Japan's perfectly straightforward and overwhelming claim to a seat, as one of the chief U.N. paymasters, is now all muddled up with these complex regional disputes, which could go on for years (as they have done already).

This is a good example of shyness and almost apologetic hesitation where a bold, up-front case, put forward with confidence, might well do better.

Of course Japan has plenty to be apologetic about over its World War II behavior, as the gatherings to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War have been reminding everybody. These apologies have been made, are being made and will continue to need to be made for ages to come in fulsome fashion.

But Japan has nothing at all to be apologetic about in its current global role as an economic giant and major contributor to world economic advance, as an increasingly significant global player in securing world stability and development, and as a massive source of ingenuity and new design, improving the human condition everywhere.

Nor should there be any cause for apology or defensiveness over the question of aid volumes. Japan has been one of the world's biggest aid providers, as well as writing off very large debts owed by Iraq and other countries.

Criticisms aimed at Japan for not giving a big enough percentage of national income in aid, or for including relief for debts that were probably never going to be repaid anyway in the overall aid calculation are wrongly directed. The whole campaign for bigger aid flows, as promoted at the recent Group of Eight meeting in Scotland last month, and as asserted in the so-called Millennium Development Goals, is sadly flawed and misconceived anyway.

What matters is not the volume of aid handed out, it is the way that aid is distributed at the recipient end. Bitter experience confirms that the promise of lavish aid flows all too often props up indolent or oppressive governments. Thus it prolongs suffering and puts a stopper on innovation and new enterprise.

Aid flows to governments can have the same effect as huge oil revenues. They simply remove the incentives to encourage grassroots development and new business. That is what has been happening in the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf -- although some wiser ones have now sought to diversify -- and that is what has been happening in Africa, the recipient of gargantuan aid donations over decades past, with largely negative results.

So no apology or hesitation is needed on this front at all. Japan should meet foolish criticism with wise actions, including the recognition that development and relief of world poverty are not "solved" by bigger and bigger aid checks, or higher percentages of national income paid out in overseas aid.

These fundamental ills are overcome, as they can be, not by crude demands for "more aid" but by a sensitive mixture of trade easement, encouragement to good governance, carefully targeted technical assistance and, of course, short-term humanitarian relief where disasters occur -- as currently and tragically in Niger.

Japanese policymakers have slowly learned these important lessons and should not hesitate to take the lead in explaining them to others who are less enlightened. The same sort of international realism that is now at last being shown by some nations -- including Japan -- over climate change and global warming, should now be shown over economic and social development in the poorer countries.

Apologies should be sincere, but kept to the now quite distant past. Realism is what is needed for a better global future. And Japan is well-placed to take the lead in providing that vital ingredient.