Security Council Condemns Nuke Tests, Urges Restraint

The 15 members of the Security Council demanded Saturday in a unanimous vote that India and Pakistan refrain from further nuclear tests, halt weapons programs and sign nuclear control agreements.

The Indian Foreign Ministry denounced the resolution as “coercive and unhelpful” and said “we find it grotesque that an organ of the United Nations should seek to address India in this manner.”

Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, Ahmad Kamal, accused the major powers of using nuclear treaties “to legitimize their own possession of huge nuclear arsenals . . . in perpetuity and as a blunt instrument” to deny them to others.

Kamal castigated the council, saying it had not responded forcefully to India’s nuclear tests and had repeatedly turned down requests to do anything about the volatile situation in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory disputed by them.

“Nonproliferation is no longer an issue in South Asia,” Kamal told the council after the vote. “There is a real danger of nuclear conflict” and “no amount of sermonizing and lamentations can rectify or reverse this unfortunate development.”

The resolution condemns the South Asian tests and urges India and Pakistan to halt deployment of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

It also calls on the two countries to exercise restraint and find “mutually acceptable solutions” to the “root causes of those tensions, including Kashmir.” And it encourages nations to stop selling India and Pakistan any equipment that could be used in nuclear weapons.

Other non-nuclear countries, including Canada, also sent a strong message to the United States and the other four declared nuclear powers--Russia, China, France and Britain--telling them to fulfill commitments to reduce their own nuclear arsenals.

The resolution, co-sponored by Japan, Slovenia, Sweden and Costa Rica, denied India and Pakistan legal status as “nuclear powers.” Formal status would enable them to keep their nuclear arms under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Meanwhile, pinched by economic sanctions for his nuclear ambitions, Pakistan’s prime minister headed Saturday to the Persian Gulf to ensure oil keeps flowing to his country.

Speaking to parliament before his departure, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif again urged India to abandon the arms race and enter talks.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee welcomed Sharif’s proposal for bilateral talks, Press Trust of India news agency quoted officials close to Vajpayee as saying.