- NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India shook the world Monday with a sudden announcement
that it had conducted three underground nuclear tests, its first in 24
years. The government said its blasts, carried out close to the Pakistan
border in the desert state of Rajasthan, established that it had proven
capability for a weapons program. Islamabad assailed its archfoe over the
unexpected experiments, and officials in Washington said the move could
perhaps trigger U.S. sanctions on India. China, India's nuclear-armed neighbor
to the north, was silent. Foreign experts said the explosions could spark
testing by China or Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
told a hurriedly summoned news conference that the controlled tests were
carried out at 3.45 p.m. (6.15 a.m. EDT) with a fission device, a low-yield
device and a thermonuclear device. ``The measured yields are in line with
expected values,'' he said in a statement from the lawn of his residence,
a national flag standing beside him. ``Measurements have also confirmed
that there was no release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.'' The British
Geological Survey said its equipment had picked up tremors from the tests
measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale -- the equivalent of a light earthquake.
The blasts were conducted in Pokhran, an uninhabited area east of the city
of Jaisalmer and about 63 miles south of the border with Pakistan. Pokhran
was also the site of India's only previous test on May 18, 1974. The Press
Trust of India said Monday's test devices were exploded 328 feet below
the ground. The tests come seven weeks after the coalition led by Vajpayee's
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took power. The BJP made the option
to introduce nuclear weapons a key plank of its platform in spring elections,
but the government said last month that it would decide whether to build
nuclear weapons only after a strategic defense review. The first country
to propose a ban on nuclear testing, India has refused to sign the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
It says they are discriminatory because they allow a few countries to hold
and refine nuclear arms indefinitely with no commitment to disarm, while
forcing all others to relinquish nuclear weapons. The nuclear tests follow
a spate of controversial comments by Defense Minister George Fernandes
on the military threat posed by China. India and China fought a brief border
war in 1962, two years before Beijing held its first nuclear test. Many
Indian analysts say China's decision to go nuclear spurred New Delhi's
test a decade later. Fernandes also reacted sharply last month to an announcement
by Pakistan, which has been to war with India three times, that it had
test-flown a long-range missile. He accused Beijing, which has long enjoyed
a close military relationship with Islamabad, of supplying Pakistan with
the missile technology. Pakistan says it is capable of producing nuclear
weapons but has never conducted a test. Indian experts gave the tests a
rapturous welcome. ``It's wonderful. I am hearing the news just now and
I'm speechless,'' said Raja Ramanna, former defense minister and former
head of India's Atomic Energy Commission. But Islamabad lashed out at New
Delhi, accusing it of sucking Pakistan into a nuclear arms race. ``I condemn
this very strongly and the international community and world must condemn
this very strongly and put sanctions against India because now they are
more or less trying to say 'to hell with you','' Foreign Minister Gohar
Ayub Khan told Reuters Television in an interview. In Washington, White
House press secretary Mike McCurry said the United States was deeply disappointed
by India's decision to conduct tests and said it ran counter to the efforts
of the international community to promulgate a comprehensive ban. Officials
said senior members of the Clinton administration were scrambling to obtain
more information about the tests and were examining U.S. sanctions laws
to see if they might apply.
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- Pakistan Vows To Meet India
Nuclear Threat
By Raja Asghar 5-11-98
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- ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan vowed Monday to meet the threat it felt
from three nuclear tests by archfoe India and said its defenses would be
made impregnable. Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan told parliament that
Pakistan, another nuclear threshold power, ``reserves the right to take
all appropriate measures for its security.'' ``Such threats will be met
by the determination of the Pakistani nation,'' he told the Senate. Khan
told reporters the Defense Committee of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's cabinet
could decide whether Pakistan should also carry out a nuclear test in response
to Monday's Indian explosions near Pakistan's border. Asked by reporters
if Pakistan would respond to the Indian tests in the same manner, Khan
said: ``It's not for me to say. It is for the Defense Committee of the
cabinet to decide.'' ``They should be condemned very, very strongly and
India has forced the subcontinent into an arms race, to a nuclear weaponry
race and missile race,'' he told Reuters Television earlier. ``Pakistan
reserves the right to take all appropriate measures for its security,''
Khan said in a brief statement to the Senate (upper house) almost five
hours after India carried out the tests in the Rajasthan western desert.
He said Sharif, who was due to return home late at night after attending
a summit in Kazakhstan, had assured Pakistanis that the country's ``defense
would be made impregnable against any Indian threat, be it nuclear or conventional.''
Chiefs of the armed forces, who have a great say in Pakistan's nuclear
program, are also represented on the Defense Committee. ``Pakistan has
taken absolutely necessary steps for its defense and security,'' the official
APP news agency quoted army chief General Jahangir Karamat as telling reporters
at a diplomatic reception Monday evening. Senate Opposition leader Aitzaz
Ahsan said the Indian tests were a threat to the security of not only Pakistan
but the whole of South Asia. ``India has propelled South Asia into a total
and perhaps irreparable imbalance,'' he said, and promised that the opposition
would go ``an extra mile'' if the government came out with a policy of
consensus to meet the challenge. ``If India has carried out three nuclear
tests, Pakistan should carry out 30 tests,'' another opposition senator,
Iqbal Haider, said. Khan regretted that Pakistan's reminders in the past
to the international community, particularly the permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council, about India's nuclear plans ``did not receive the
attention that they merited.'' ``The responsibility for dealing a death
blow to the global efforts at nuclear non-proliferation rests squarely
with India.'' The tests were staged one month after Pakistan test-fired
the ``Ghauri'' medium-range missile which, it said, would be a deterrent
to India's arsenals. Pakistan has said in the past that it can make nuclear
weapons but has taken a policy decision not to do so and will not sign
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
unless India does the same.
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