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.
