Pakistan Ignores Outcry, Conducts New Nuclear Test

The Pakistani government flouted international opinion again Saturday by announcing its sixth nuclear test, and then it all but invited world leaders to broker a peace between it and archrival India.

The test, a single atomic explosion in the Baluchistan desert, followed Pakistan’s claim of five detonations Thursday. The tests were intended to answer the five tests carried out by India earlier this month.

News of the second round of testing came amid conflicting reports about the number and intensity of the detonations.

Though U.S. intelligence officers confirmed Saturday’s blast, a senior Clinton administration official said the White House is skeptical of Pakistan’s claim of testing a total of six nuclear devices. The official said the administration believes instead that Pakistan has tested only two.

At a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad said his government is satisfied that Pakistan has erected a credible deterrent against India, and he suggested that his government will not carry out any more nuclear tests in the near future.

Ahmad said his government is willing to start talking with India to settle their differences. He suggested that Pakistan might be willing to sign treaties banning nuclear tests and the distribution of nuclear weapons technology--provided India does the same.

“It is not our intention to enter an arms race,” Ahmad said at the news conference. “The only race we want to run is for economic development.”

In a veiled appeal to the West, Ahmad said the surest way to end the crisis in South Asia is to help resolve what he deemed its underlying cause: the half-century-old quarrel over the region of Kashmir.

“The real causes of insecurity, conflicts and tension in our region need to be redressed,” he said. “It is therefore imperative to find a peaceful and just solution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.”

The foreign secretary mocked world leaders who, he said, obsessed over the spread of nuclear weapons while ignoring the tensions that drive countries to arm themselves.

“The high priests of non-proliferation do not scratch below the surface,” Ahmad said. “The symptom is their problem. The disease afflicts us.”

‘Primed and Ready’ to Test-Fire Missile

The diplomatic overtures came as U.S. officials, still jittery at the failure of U.S. intelligence to give advance notice of the Indian nuclear tests, said Pakistan appeared “primed and ready” to test-fire a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Pakistani officials refused to discuss any such plans Saturday.

Pakistan test-fired one such missile, the intermediate-range Ghauri, April 6. The Ghauri, named for the 12th-century Muslim conqueror of India, is capable of hitting most targets in that country.

Ahmad said the device tested by Pakistan on Saturday is “compatible” with the country’s existing weapons, which include the Ghauri missile. But Ahmad contradicted an earlier report that said his government had placed nuclear warheads atop the Ghauri.

“We have done nothing of the sort,” Ahmad said.

Ahmad would not discuss whether his government has any plans to arm a Ghauri with a nuclear warhead. But such a step would be viewed here and in Western capitals as a dangerous escalation between the two countries.

The Indian government initiated the tensions May 11 with three nuclear tests, which it followed May 13 with two more. After a burst of public euphoria, the Indian government has come under growing criticism that it has begun a costly and dangerous arms race.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council rebuked Pakistan for its Saturday test.

In London, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Saturday that he will host a June 12 meeting of his Group of Eight counterparts from Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

He said the meeting will “coordinate our approach to Pakistan and India in the light of the nuclear tests and will consider in particular how we can most effectively bring both of them within the global non-proliferation regime and encourage them to address the roots of the tension between them.”

President Clinton on Saturday condemned the second round of Pakistani tests and urged each side to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

“These [tests] can only serve to increase tensions in an already volatile region,” Clinton said.

The Pakistani nuclear device, detonated at 11:55 a.m. local time Saturday at a desert location near the first test site, released no radiation into the atmosphere, Pakistani officials said.

As with the first five announced tests, the officials said they conducted a nuclear fission test, which involves splitting an atom. None of the devices tested involved a thermonuclear reaction, which produces a far more powerful blast.

The second round of Pakistan’s nuclear testing, coupled with the diplomatic gestures, seemed calculated to send a tough message to the Indians without foreclosing a Western-brokered diplomatic solution to the South Asian tensions.

Pakistan and India have both been slapped with U.S. and Japanese economic sanctions and buffeted by criticism from governments around the world.

Signs emerged Saturday that both India and the West are receptive to at least parts of the Pakistani overtures.

India’s president, Kocheril Raman Narayanan, said his country will not respond to Pakistan with another detonation.

“There is no need for us to go in for such tests,” Narayanan said during a visit to Nepal. “It is not a competitive game.”

Diplomats Encouraged by Pakistani Gestures

Privately, U.S. diplomats said that while they were disappointed by the latest nuclear test, they were encouraged by the Pakistani gestures.

“They told us they are done with this series of tests and now are ready to talk with the Indians,” said a Clinton administration official who asked not to be identified. “My gut feeling is they’ve done what they set out to do and now want to cool it.”

Still, the likelihood that the U.S. will try to broker a resolution to the Indian-Pakistani dispute in Kashmir seems remote.

Kashmir, a mountainous region along India’s northern border with Pakistan, is claimed by both countries in its entirety. Each country occupies part of it and refuses to accept the claim of the other.

The region, which, like India and Pakistan, once formed part of the British Empire, has been the source of two of the three wars that India and Pakistan have fought since 1947.

A Pakistani-supported insurgency in the Indian portion of Kashmir has killed more than 20,000 people in the last decade, and the two sides routinely shell each other along the “line of control.”

Pakistan, which wants a plebiscite to decide Kashmir’s future, has long sought outside intervention to reach a settlement.

India, with an army twice the size of Pakistan’s, insists that the matter be settled between them.

There is little evidence to suggest that India’s policy has changed. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has said he wants to “take back” the Pakistani-occupied portion of Kashmir.

Indeed, it was the Indian government’s recent threats over the region that provided the final push behind Pakistan’s decision to test a nuclear device, U.S. officials said.

The senior Clinton administration official said Saturday that, while the White House is watching Kashmir closely, it has no plans to get involved.

Islamabad Insisting There Were 6 Tests

Despite conflicting reports, Pakistani officials continued to insist that it had conducted five nuclear tests earlier this week and one on Saturday, for a total of six.

A. Q. Khan, the head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, said his government had tested one nuclear device Thursday with an explosive power of 30 kilotons to 35 kilotons--which would make it twice the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945--and four nuclear devices of a smaller explosive force.

U.S. officials said Pakistan may be inflating its claims to hide the poor performance of its tests--and a weakness in its nuclear program.

Seismic sensors detected only one tremor Thursday, and officials said, while it was possible for Pakistan to have exploded two weapons simultaneously, it was far less likely to have done so with five.

American spy satellites spotted final preparations for Saturday’s test and its aftermath at a remote site in western Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said Saturday’s weapon was 18 kilotons, but U.S. officials said the blast appeared to be about two kilotons.

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Filkins reported from Islamabad, Wright from Ann Arbor, Mich. Times staff writers John-Thor Dahlburg in New Delhi and Tyler Marshall and Jonathan Peterson in Washington, and researcher Amitabh Sharma in New Delhi, contributed to this report.