India says Pakistan's nuclear tests justify own policy World Bank freezes aid to India over nuclear tests India prepared for 'no 1st use' pact with Pakistan Clinton urges India, Pakistan to avoid nuke arms race India ready to negotiate nuclear test ban: Vajpayee Nonaligned confab calls for end to nuclear weapons Asia forum raps India over nuclear tests Brazil cancels nuclear cooperation accord with India Nagasaki asks communities to protest India N-tests Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors to visit India Ramos condemns India's nuclear tests Students join Nagasaki protest against India's N-tests Sri Lanka decries sanctions, backs nuclear tests Blair phones Vajpayee over nuclear testing Nagasaki mayor calls for local protests against India U.N. Security Council raps India's nuclear tests Premier declares India nuclear state U.S., Japan to work together in punishing India Japanese groups protest India's nuclear tests Japan imposes more sanctions over India's nuclear tests Clinton imposes sanctions against India India flouts world opinion with 2 more nuclear tests Gov't spokesman Muraoka's statement on sanctions on India India's Vajpayee writes to world leaders on nuke testing:By Kanak Nair Japan eyes sanctions against India over nuclear tests Institute says tested device bigger than Hiroshima bomb

NEW DELHI, May 11 Kyodo - India on Monday exploded three types of nuclear devices underground, the first such tests in over two decades, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced.

In a move likely to further sour India's ties with neighboring Pakistan and invite U.S. economic sanctions, the devices were exploded at the Pokhran desert range in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, about 500 kilometers southwest of New Delhi.

The Indian tests come one month after Pakistan, which is also a nuclear threshold state, said it had test-fired a new 1,500 km ''Ghauri'' surface-to-surface missile.

Vajpayee said the tests were conducted at 3:45 p.m. (10:15 GMT) with fission, low-yield and thermonuclear devices. ''The measured yields are in line with the expected values. Measurements have confirmed that there was no release of radioactivity into the atmosphere,'' he said.

Vajpayee said Monday's tests involved ''contained explosions'' like when India last exploded a nuclear device in May 1974, also at Pokhran.

India, which has refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has long maintained that its nuclear testing is for peaceful purposes.

While the 1974 test was officially presented as a limited explosion to aid nuclear physics research and to back up civilian applications, prominent Indian nuclear scientist Raja Ramanna publicly stated in October 1997 that the test provided information which could be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Pakistan, which has not conducted any tests of its own, has threatened to respond commensurately to any Indian test. Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party took over government in March.

It pledged in its election manifesto and in its national agenda for governance, which was also ratified by its 13 pre-poll allies, to ''reevaluate the nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons.''

The United States has said both India and Pakistan could assemble a limited number of nuclear weapons in a relatively short time frame and that both also have the means to deliver them.

The U.S. had told India that conducting a test would damage bilateral ties in light of a statute calling for strict sanctions against any nonnuclear weapon state that detonates a nuclear device.

The statute requires that the U.S. discontinue most forms of economic assistance, defense sales and services, and credit guarantees, while also cutting U.S. Export-Import Bank support, blocking American bank loans to the Indian government, and opposing loans from the World Bank and other international financial institutions.

Japan considers new sanctions on India, gov't spokesman

TOKYO, May 13 Kyodo - Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's government said Wednesday Japan will take further but unspecified punitive steps against India for conducting two more nuclear tests shortly after Japan announced economic sanctions over the nation's tests conducted Monday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kanezo Muraoka made the statement.

The previously announced sanctions involve suspending fresh grants-in-aid, shelving a plan to host a World Bank forum of donor nations on India on June 30 and July 1, and making a formal decision on whether to halt yen loans after monitoring India's response to Japan's concerns.

The suspension of grants will exclude emergency, humanitarian and ''grass-roots'' projects. A Foreign Ministry source said the cancellation of the forum ''is effectively a freezing of yen loans'' because Japan has used the forum in the past to announce such loans.

But the new tests may result in Japan formally deciding to slash the yen loans as Hashimoto hinted at further sanctions. Reacting later to the new tests, Hashimoto told reporters that he instructed officials to ''urgently consider what can be done further and what measures are available'' before the premier leaves for Britain Thursday evening to attend the weekend summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) major nations in Birmingham.

Hashimoto intends to explain Japan's position and call for a special statement condemning India during the G-8 summit in the central English city. He called it ''grave'' that India had gone ahead with the new tests at a time when ''not only Japan, but international society'' is showing serious opposition to the three tests conducted Monday for the first time in 24 years. Hashimoto later told reporters at his official residence that Chief Cabinet Secretary Kanezo Muraoka will issue some form of government statement on the latest underground nuclear tests.

Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi summoned Indian Ambassador Siddharth Singh on Wednesday night to express ''deep regret'' over the two nuclear tests and convey Japan's position.

On Tuesday, Obuchi summoned Singh to express displeasure over three nuclear tests conducted by India on Monday.

Hashimoto said earlier that Japan has started considering further sanctions against India for conducting the latest tests. Japan announced sanctions earlier in the day before India announced the most recent tests.

Muraoka said in an earlier statement the sanctions are based on the principles of Japan's official development assistance (ODA). Japan's ODA principles stipulate such conditions as looking into the recipient nation's military spending, possession of weapons of mass destruction and arms exports before extending assistance.

In 1996, Japan imposed sanctions on China for testing nuclear weapons but its measures were limited to freezing grants. Muraoka urged India to stop nuclear tests ''immediately'' and to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has been extended permanently, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1996.

India's nuclear testing ''cannot be tolerated at all,'' Muraoka said, calling it a ''challenge against the efforts of the whole international community to realize a world free of nuclear weapons.'' Japan has been the largest aid donor to India since 1986, according to the government.

Japan provided 3.5 billion yen in grants-in-aid to India for fiscal 1997, which ended March 31. In October 1997, Japan committed 132.7 billion yen in loans to India.

Japan offered its first low-interest yen loans to India in 1958 to assist the nation's development projects, and has since provided yen loans to India every year except in 1959, 1960, 1978 and 1983. The Indian nuclear tests have raised voices of protest in Japan, the only country to have experienced atomic bombing -- in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

Hiroshima Gov. Yuzan Fujita expressed his ''deep anger and deep grief'' that India had conducted further nuclear tests despite the protest he lodged Monday, and called for an immediate halt to nuclear tests by India. In Japan's parliament, the House of Councilors unanimously adopted a resolution at a plenary session Wednesday urging the government to take appropriate measures and calling on India to ''immediately halt nuclear development.''

India flouts world opinion with 2 more nuclear tests

NEW DELHI, May 13 Kyodo - India announced Wednesday that it has carried out two more underground nuclear tests, two days after it conducted three tests that sparked condemnation from around the world. The government issued a statement saying the two sub-kiloton tests, which were conducted at 12:21 p.m. (0651 GMT) at the Pokhran range in the northwestern desert state of Rajasthan, complete a ''planned program of nuclear tests'' that began Monday.

Monday's explosions of nuclear devices were the first by India in 24 years. ''The tests have been carried out to generate additional data for improved computer simulation of designs and for attaining the capability to carry out subcritical experiments, if considered necessary,'' the statement said. ''The tests were fully contained with no release of radioactivity into the atmosphere,'' it said.

Neighboring Pakistan, a longtime foe of India, has condemned the testing as ''reckless and highly provocative.'' The tests raise fears of a nuclear arms race in South Asia, where both India and Pakistan are widely believed to be able to assemble a limited number of nuclear weapons in a relatively short time frame. Both countries also have the means to deliver them, with Pakistan announcing last month that it had test-fired a new 1,500 kilometer-range ''Ghauri'' surface-to-surface missile.

Pakistan, which has not conducted any nuclear tests of its own, had threatened to respond commensurately to any Indian nuclear test. After India's last nuclear test in 1974, then Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared that Pakistan would also go nuclear, even if the people have to eat grass.

While India's 1974 test was officially presented as a limited explosion to aid nuclear physics research and to back up civilian applications, prominent Indian nuclear scientist Raja Ramanna publicly stated last October that the test provided information which could be used to make a nuclear bomb. India has refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, calling both discriminatory. In its Tuesday statement, the Indian government reiterated its offer to consider adhering to some of CTBT undertakings ''in the framework of the proposal in its statement of the 11th of May, 1998.''

The government had said Monday it would support efforts to realize the goal of a truly comprehensive international arrangement which would prohibit underground nuclear testing of all weapons, as well as related experiments described as subcritical or hydronuclear.

''But this cannot obviously be done in a vacuum,'' Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's principal secretary Brijesh Misra had said Monday.

''It would necessarily be an evolutionary process from concept to commitment and would depend on a number of reciprocal activities,'' he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said Wednesday that Japan, India's largest donor, will penalize India for its nuclear weapons tests in part by suspending grants-in-aid worth an estimated 30 million dollars.

He reportedly plans to propose joint action against India at a summit meeting of the leaders of the Group of Eight major countries in Birmingham, England, this coming weekend.

U.S. President Bill Clinton, who is visiting Berlin, on Wednesday signed documents imposing sanctions against India for conducting nuclear weapons tests this week, White House officials said.

The sanctions are to be imposed under a 1994 U.S. non-proliferation statute that calls for strict sanctions against any nonnuclear weapon state that detonates a nuclear device.

The statute requires that the U.S. discontinue most forms of economic assistance, defense sales and services, and credit guarantees, while also cutting U.S. Export-Import Bank support, blocking American bank loans to the Indian government, and opposing loans from the World Bank and other international financial institutions.