China Sidesteps Call on Nuclear Tests

China on Monday sidestepped President Clinton’s request to join the United States publicly in a moratorium on underground nuclear testing.

In a statement issued in response to Clinton’s extension of a testing moratorium, the Chinese Foreign Ministry chose only to reiterate Beijing’s oft-stated stand opposing nuclear arms in principle and vowing “restraint” in testing.

But the statement avoided mention of Washington’s specific request that China agree to halt testing.

Clinton on Saturday extended by at least 15 months the U.S. moratorium on underground nuclear blasts and called on Russia, France, Britain and China to join in.

China conducted its most recent underground blasts last year on May 21 and Sept. 25, just two days after the most recent U.S. test, putting Beijing effectively--if not officially--in step with the U.S. moratorium.

A nuclear power since the 1960s, China won international applause in 1991 when it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty after decades of shunning the pact as hegemonistic.

It has not signed the 1974 threshold treaty under which Washington and Moscow agreed to limit underground nuclear tests to yields of less than 150 kilotons.

China’s May, 1992, test was a one-megaton blast--about 50 times as powerful as recent U.S. tests and 500 times the size of the bomb that leveled the Japanese city of Hiroshima to end World War II.