Pakistan in ‘No Haste’ to Test Bomb, U.S. Told

Pakistan’s leaders paused at the nuclear edge Friday, telling a high-level American delegation that they were in no rush to match the atomic weapons tests by archrival India.

Meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he was alarmed by India’s actions but not yet willing to give the order for Pakistan to explode a nuclear device of its own.

“We are in no haste to test the bomb,” Sharif said before heading into a meeting with Talbott in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. “It’s not just tit-for-tat. We are a responsible nation.”

Sharif made the remarks as U.S. officials around the globe worked feverishly to head off a potential arms race sparked by India’s five nuclear weapons tests earlier this week.

At the same time, political pressure within Pakistan mounted for the government to act. Among those urging decisive action was Sharif’s chief political rival, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who, in a column to be published in The Times on Sunday, called for a preemptive military strike against India’s nuclear capabilities.

Pakistan deliberated its next move even as the New Delhi government ratcheted up tensions Friday by declaring India a nuclear power capable of building a “big bomb.”

“India is now a nuclear weapons state,” Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in an interview made public Friday.

It was Vajpayee’s announcement earlier this week that India had tested several nuclear devices--including a hydrogen bomb--that sent the region careening toward crisis. Defying condemnation from countries around the world, Vajpayee said he had acted to safeguard the security of the Indian state.

President Clinton dispatched Talbott and several other high-level American officials to Pakistan after it became clear that the country was making preparations to test a nuclear device.

India and Pakistan, which both gained independence from Britain in 1947, have fought three wars and gone to the brink twice. American officials are concerned that if each country arms itself with atomic weapons, the next confrontation could escalate into a nuclear exchange.

Another big worry is that if the U.S. fails to take decisive action against India, other nations might be emboldened to test or deploy nuclear weapons. India aside, only five nations have publicly declared that they possess such weapons: the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China.

U.S. diplomats said they came away from their meeting impressed by the seriousness with which Sharif and his advisors were viewing the crisis--amid the pressure to order a test. The American officials said that, although they received no assurances that Pakistan would refrain from testing, they found Sharif willing to hear them out.

“It is our sense that the Pakistani leadership has not made a final or irrevocable decision over this issue,” one official said.

The American officials said it appeared that Pakistan was waiting to see whether the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations meeting in Birmingham, England, would stiffen sanctions against India.

That doesn’t appear likely. While the leaders of the industrialized nations have condemned India’s nuclear tests--and some have suspended aid programs--they have not followed Clinton’s lead in slapping India with economic sanctions.

U.S. officials said the Pakistanis were angry that the world had not taken the Indian threat seriously until it was too late. The Americans said the Pakistani leaders wanted assurances that the U.S. sanctions, which include a suspension of economic aid, would stay in place for a long time.

“They want the U.S. and other members of the international community to work harder,” an American official said.

U.S. economic sanctions against Pakistan are automatic if the latter conducts new nuclear testing. In addition, American officials dangled a range of incentives before the Pakistanis to secure their cooperation, including the possibility of freeing up a $650-million purchase of American fighter jets that has been frozen because of concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear program.

“There were no trade-offs,” an American official said. “No one suggested that there was any magic bullet solution to this problem.”

Sharif acknowledged the existence of Pakistan’s once-clandestine nuclear program, which is thought to be capable of producing a small number of atomic weapons.

“We have the capability, and we didn’t test the bomb for the last 15 to 20 years,” Sharif said.

Pakistani officials reiterated that they would make their decision based on national security--and not pressure from the outside. Published reports have quoted American intelligence sources as saying that Pakistan could be ready to test a nuclear device as early as Sunday.

“Our position is quite clear,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Tarik Altaf said. “Our response will be in keeping with the threats we are facing and with our national security interests.”

Within Pakistan, political pressure is growing for the government to respond to India’s nuclear tests. Demonstrators in Karachi burned the Indian prime minister in effigy. One of the country’s most influential Muslim clerics delivered a fatwa, or edict, declaring that Pakistan has a duty to explode a nuclear device. Pakistani television and newspapers were filled with reports of the crisis.

“India has brandished nuclear fangs at the world,” Nasim Zehra wrote in the News, one of the country’s leading newspapers. “Pakistan cannot afford to wait.”

Former Prime Minister Bhutto called for a military strike to destroy India’s nuclear capability. In her column, to be distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Bhutto wrote that economic sanctions would not be enough to persuade India to abandon its nuclear program.

“Rogue nations that defy world opinion ought to be taught a lesson,” Bhutto wrote. “If a preemptive military strike is possible to neutralize India’s nuclear capability, that is the response that is necessary.”

She did not say who should carry out such a strike.

The aggressive stance is likely to further inflame nationalistic hard-liners in India, as well as roil Pakistan’s domestic politics. South Asia political observers say her purpose almost certainly was to undermine Sharif, who succeeded her in office but whose hold on power is shaky.

Bhutto, 45, was prime minister twice, from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996. She was ousted on corruption charges both times but still enjoys popular support in Pakistan. Her most recent removal was Nov. 5, 1996, when President Farooq Leghari dismissed her and called for new elections.

Bhutto resides in the United Arab Emirates and faces arrest on corruption charges if she returns to Pakistan.

A senior Clinton administration official dismissed Bhutto’s call as “a ridiculously provocative suggestion.”

“We are trying to persuade Pakistan not to retaliate by conducting its own tests, and comments like that only make things more difficult,” the official said.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee continued to defy world opinion--and bask in adulation at home--with his aggressive pronouncements. By declaring India a nuclear-armed power, Vajpayee said he wanted to dispel any ambiguities about his nation’s capabilities.

Today, India is believed to have enough nuclear material to make 80 to 100 bombs, says the Center for Defense Information in Washington. Pakistan has enough for eight to 13, the group estimates.

“India will not be cowed down by any such threats and punitive steps,” Vajpayee said. “India has the sanction of her own past glory and future vision to become strong--in every sense of the word.”

Also Friday, nuclear experts said India was able to set off the nuclear tests without detection because it knew when to hide from U.S. spy satellites--not because American spies were asleep at the wheel.

“It’s not a failure of the CIA,” Indian nuclear researcher G. Balachandran told Associated Press. “It’s a matter of their intelligence being good, our deception being better.”

U.S. lawmakers have blamed their spies for the failure. But Indian scientists long ago figured out when American satellites could monitor the desert range where three underground explosions were detonated Monday and two more Wednesday, said R.R. Subramanian, a nuclear physicist with New Delhi’s independent Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses.

Hiding preparations for the tests was merely a matter of choosing the hours when the satellites were focused elsewhere to move the necessary people and chemicals, he said.

Subramanian added that May was a good month for a clandestine test because skies were likely to be cloudy, providing some camouflage over the range near Pokaran in the Thar desert, 330 miles southwest of New Delhi.

Filkins reported from Islamabad, Kempster from Washington. Also contributing to this report were Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren in Birmingham and Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus.