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.