U.S., Japan to work together in punishing India

WASHINGTON, May 13 Kyodo - The United States and Japan will work together to punish India with economic sanctions for conducting five rounds of nuclear tests on two occasions despite global protests, a U.S. government official said Wednesday. The official, in charge of U.S. policy toward Japan, said U.S President Bill Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto are expected to reach an agreement on taking harmonious punitive steps against India in their meeting scheduled shortly before the Summit of the Eight talks of influential countries in Birmingham, England. The official also said the situations surrounding India have worsened because of Wednesday's nuclear testing, and that the U.S. expects Japan, which is the largest single donor country to India, to take further retaliatory actions against New Delhi. The Japanese government has already announced that Tokyo would 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. The initial 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 grassroots projects. President Clinton, who is visiting Berlin, signed documents Wednesday to invoke a 1994 U.S. nuclear nonproliferation statute that calls for strict sanctions against any nonnuclear weapon state that detonates a nuclear device. The statute requires that the U.S. discontinue all forms of economic assistance except ones for humanitarian purposes, 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. India exploded nuclear devices for the first time in 24 years Monday, one month after Pakistan, which is also a nuclear threshold state, said it had test-fired a new 1,500-kilometer ''Ghauri'' surface-to-surface missile. Both India and Pakistan have refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, preventing the treaty from going into force.