U.S. Appeals Didn’t Sway Pakistan

Eleven days ago, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif got a call from London. On the line were President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

They argued that Pakistan would benefit, both economically and in military security, if it resisted the temptation to compete with India by carrying out nuclear tests. Sharif reportedly complained about what he viewed as the international community’s weak reaction to India’s blasts. Major powers such as the United States and China had offered little incentive not to match India’s tests.

Back in Washington three days later, Clinton tried again with another call to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Afterward, striving to put the best face on a bad situation, he termed it a “good, long conversation about where we go from here.”

Translation: The Pakistani government was still moving toward detonating a bomb.

The last call to Islamabad from the White House went out shortly before midnight Wednesday.

Briefed on intelligence reports that Pakistan had completed preparations to detonate its first nuclear explosion at a test site in the barren, mountainous region southwest of Quetta, Clinton was pressing Sharif one more time to show restraint.

In the course of the 20-minute call made from the president’s private quarters in the White House residence, Clinton, sounding determined but measured, repeated an argument he had used before: that Pakistan actually had the chance to be better off economically and have greater security by refraining from a nuclear test.

The message wasn’t enough.

Seven hours later, Pakistan evened the score with its longtime regional adversary, India, by exploding what was reported as five separate nuclear devices. Aside from bringing new dangers to an already tense region and accelerating the globe’s first regional nuclear arms race, the tests confirmed Pakistan as the Islamic world’s first nuclear power.

Worldwide Campaign Didn’t Prevent Testing

They also ended a frantic diplomatic effort--much of it led by the United States--aimed at keeping Pakistan from somehow going through with the tests that arms control specialists agreed it had the capability to carry out.

Indeed, from the minute news of India’s nuclear explosions first stunned an unsuspecting world and rumbled through the corridors of Western powers 17 days ago, international efforts had focused heavily on heading off neighboring Pakistan from following suit. The issue leaped immediately to the top of the agenda at a long-planned meeting of leaders from the Group of 8 industrial nations that began in Britain four days after India’s first test. It brought personal pleas from other leaders, including Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. It began a marathon series of consultations, meetings and even the joint telephone call to Sharif from Clinton and Blair, who together dangled the benefits of not testing.

Eager to help Pakistan and punish India, Congress quickly took up the idea of lifting 8-year-old sanctions on Islamabad, paving the way to possible new economic and military aid. Undersecretary of State Strobe Talbott completed a grueling 15,000-mile trip from Washington to Islamabad and then to Britain, where he arrived gray with fatigue to report his efforts to Clinton and the other G-8 leaders.

Observer Says Western Policy Is ‘in Tatters’

In the end, however, all these efforts failed--undermined in part by the inability of Western nations to agree on strong punitive measures against India and insufficient assurances of support to a worried Pakistani government, even from such historical allies as the United States and China.

“Western policy has been anchored in a white lie,” said Jonathan Eyal, director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense think tank. “As long as Pakistan and India didn’t flaunt their nuclear capability, everyone pretended it wasn’t there. Now that policy is in tatters at every level.”

During the initial hours that followed India’s first tests, conducted May 11, the White House had reason to feel it was off to a good start. After hesitating briefly, Clinton declared he would impose mandatory sanctions against India immediately instead of waiting 30 days as allowed by law.

Two days later, Clinton placed the first in a series of ultimately futile phone calls to Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister.

In that first call, Sharif declined to offer Clinton assurances that Pakistan would refrain from answering India’s unexpected blasts with nuclear tests of its own. Despite the leaders’ disagreements, the call set a tone that differed markedly from the wounded relations between the United States and India.

“Basically, the president and the prime minister pledged to stay personally engaged,” a National Security Council source said Thursday.

The same day as that first call, Clinton dispatched a high-level U.S. delegation led by Talbott to Islamabad. Talbott, an old Clinton friend from college days, was accompanied by Gen. Anthony Zinni, U.S. military commander for the region, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Inderfurth and Bruce Riedel, a senior director on the National Security Council.

White House Readied Package for Pakistan

The broad outlines of a deal were starting to take shape, at least from the U.S. perspective: The Clinton administration would try to persuade Congress to remove U.S. sanctions already on Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons program and would also resolve a $500-million dispute over 28 F-16 fighters that never were delivered to the Islamabad regime.

In addition, the White House would work with other nations, such as Britain and Japan, to increase aid to Pakistan, both individually and through international institutions such as the World Bank.

But there were limits to what the Americans could pledge: “In order to move forward with some of those ideas, you had to have a decision from the Pakistanis not to test,” an administration source said Thursday.

There were other problems. Big problems.

Any hopes of coordinated international action to punish India gradually evaporated.

While France and Russia signaled almost immediately that they would not join the United States by imposing sanctions on India, there was still hope that Britain’s Blair, as host of the G-8 meeting, would help shape a tough response. But at a working dinner on the first night of the three-day summit, it became clear that the youthful British leader had no appetite for anything more than a verbal condemnation.

Meeting by a stroke of luck days after India’s tests in an atmosphere of shock, outrage and crisis, the leaders of the eight powerful nations struck back at India with words. They condemned the nuclear tests, then went to dessert.

A crucial moment had passed.

The administration’s frustration was as visible as the lack of any real plan to deal with the situation.

On the final day of the summit, Clinton could only lamely tell reporters, “We’ve got to find a way out of this.”

Initiatives Became Mired in Senate

India’s nuclear adventure also had echoed through Congress. The day after its first tests were reported, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution condemning New Delhi, while Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) added an amendment calling for an unconditional repeal of legislation that originally led to sanctions against Pakistan in 1990.

But there was opposition from several senators claiming that such a move would decimate legislation aimed at containing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

There was also a worry in Congress about any move that might provide Pakistan with new F-16s, aircraft that have the potential to deliver nuclear weapons.

At loggerheads on the issue, the Senate returned to a debate on tobacco, then adjourned last Friday for the Memorial Day recess without revisiting the issue.

The lack of congressional action sent one more signal to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Pakistan too went out in search of security guarantees, with Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed traveling to Beijing 10 days after India’s first tests, quietly searching for assurances from its powerful friend to the north that had provided Pakistan with some of the most sensitive technology Islamabad needed to build its first nuclear bombs.

Although the Chinese reportedly urged Pakistan not to detonate a nuclear devise, the guarantees didn’t come.

By Wednesday night, all indications were that Pakistan was on the verge of a test, irrevocably altering the military situation in its own region and sending a frightening signal to the rest of the world. Calling from the residential area of the White House at 11:37 p.m., Clinton made a plea for Sharif to use restraint. The leaders spoke for 22 minutes but reached no agreement.

Clinton “implored Sharif not to test and warned him there would be consequences if they proceeded,” recalled Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary. “It was a very intense telephone call.”

At 8:38 Thursday morning Washington time, nine hours after making what would be his last personal plea to Sharif not to test, Clinton was on the receiving end of a call from Islamabad. Sharif personally told him of the blasts. But Clinton already knew about it, aides said, having been briefed by his national security advisor. The leaders spoke for four minutes. Soon after, Sharif informed a wildly enthusiastic Pakistani public.

“In today’s world there are no umbrellas, no guarantees for security,” Pakistan’s Ahmed concluded after failing to win strong support from China.

Seventeen days of frenetic diplomacy had ended in failure.

Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.