India feels unthreatened by escalating arms race

India feels unthreatened by escalating arms race

NEW DELHI (Agencies): India said yesterday it neither
threatened nor feared Pakistan, its neighbor and rival that
declared its nuclear capability with five tests a day before.

Pakistan blamed India for escalating the regional arms race,
saying it was responding to five Indian tests two weeks earlier.

India had said it needed a nuclear deterrence against China's
declared nuclear arsenal and Pakistan's once-secret nuclear
program.

"It is... unfortunate that Pakistan has chosen to declare the
tests 'India-specific," Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes
said in Parliament yesterday.

Fernandes played down Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, noting
its tests released the equivalent of the explosive power of 10
kilotons of TNT, as measured by Indian researchers. The largest
of India's five tests was measured at 45 kilotons by Indian
scientists, though international monitors estimated it at 10
kilotons.

Earlier, speaking to a BBC interviewer, Fernandes refused to
say whether India would arm its missiles with nuclear bombs, as
Pakistan has said it will do, but said: "We will do whatever is
necessary to safeguard our national security and defeat any evil
intentions that anyone has on us..."

Independent researchers estimate Pakistan has enough
stockpiled weapons-grade uranium for 25 nuclear bombs, while
India has enough weapons-grade plutonium for 78.

Indian newspapers urged yesterday the government to act coolly
and refrain from plunging into an arms race with Pakistan after
Islamabad conducted five nuclear tests.

The Indian Express, in a front-page editorial headlined "Test
of Wisdom", said India had tested its will by conducting
underground nuclear trials earlier this month. Now it was time to
test its wisdom.

"The choice is either a debilitating arms race with Pakistan,
or a firm, confident move towards the status India deserves on
the world stage," said Chief Editor Shekhar Gupta.

"The test of a leadership's wisdom lies in sculpting a policy
framework with absolutely cool and calculated detachment and
then, if necessary, creating the popular mood and emotion to back
it," he wrote.

"This is where supreme national interest and genuine
patriotism lie, not in grandstanding or playing to the gallery."

The Economic Times said the Indian government had a choice of
putting a full stop to the nuclear race.

"Now there is a choice before the Indian government, a choice
between further accelerating the arms race and calling it quits,"
the Economic Times said. "The first option is macho, politically
more appealing in the myopic term and absolutely senseless. The
second option makes sense."

"India must choose the no-war option. It makes no sense to
fight a war that might escalate into mutually assured
destruction," it said.

The Pioneer said in its editorial that Pakistan's security
compulsions could not be compared to India's.

"Being a regional power, India's security concerns are in an
all together different league from those of its western
nabber. The Pakistani bomb is aimed at India and India alone,
while it is not vice-versa," the Pioneer said.

India says that its national security is threatened by a
nuclear-armed China to the north as well as Pakistan, the two
countries with which it has fought wars in the past 50 years.

The Times of India said it would be easier for India to face
an open Pakistani nuclear weapon -- as it does the Chinese one --
instead of an undeclared weapon.

"What was so far a situation of implicit mutual deterrence now
becomes an overt one. With this both countries are bound to
realize that a war between them will be meaningless," it said.

It said the world will have to reconcile to the reality of
seven declared nuclear weapon powers.