India Sets Off 2 More Blasts; U.S. Levies Sanctions

NEW DELHI — India set off two more underground nuclear explosions Wednesday, defying overwhelming international condemnations, including President Clinton’s decision to impose U.S. sanctions that could cost the Indians billions of dollars in aid.

The Indian government said in a statement here that the underground tests complete the nation’s nuclear program and indicated that it now stands ready to sign an international treaty banning nuclear tests.

The tests sparked another round of worldwide criticism and raised fears that India’s biggest potential adversaries--Pakistan and China--might respond by conducting nuclear tests of their own. Pakistan was reported on the verge of such a move.

Clinton signed the sanctions order in Berlin early Wednesday after arriving for a meeting with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in preparation for a summit in Britain this weekend of the heads of the leading industrial nations.

Clinton administration officials said the president received word of the two new tests--the fourth and fifth India conducted this week--only hours before. They said he had made the decision earlier while still aboard Air Force One.

Clinton said he telephoned Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to urge him to abandon any plans to test nuclear weapons. “I encouraged him to resist the temptation to respond to an irresponsible act in kind,” the president said.

Clinton also sent Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, to confer Friday with Sharif and other officials. The United States already has imposed limited sanctions on Pakistan for underground testing it conducted in 1990.

U.S. officials in Berlin declined repeatedly to describe Sharif’s response, but Karl F. Inderfurth, assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, told Congress that the Pakistani leader “was not able . . . to give that assurance.”

The spate of U.S. economic sanctions against India will cut off about $144 million in U.S. economic and military aid, bar U.S. banks from making loans to the Indian government and restrict exports of computers and other technology that might be used for military purposes.

The United States also will oppose any new loans to India by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

India was expected to borrow $3 billion from the World Bank this year. Clinton said he will ask other countries to take similar action.

Senior U.S. officials confirmed that Clinton had left Washington prepared to delay any decision on the sanctions issue, possibly for as long as the full 30 days that the law permits. But they said early news reports portraying him as waffling helped change his mind.

Word of the two explosions announced Wednesday set off a new round of political fallout in Washington. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) denounced India’s action as incredible and called for maintaining sanctions until India’s program is rolled back.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also condemned India, saying he was confident that Congress will fully support the president’s decision to impose sanctions. He called India’s action extraordinarily reckless and destabilizing.

Here in New Delhi, however, the Indian government remained unrepentant. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, speaking to a group of supporters, said only that the new tests were needed to enable India to protect itself. “Ideally, I’d like a nuclear-free world, but that’s not the reality today,” he said.

The blasts Tuesday and Wednesday were set off at the Pokaran range about 330 miles southwest of New Delhi, the capital. India said no radioactivity was released.

Inderfurth told Congress that Indian officials had said the explosions were necessary to establish India’s capability and generate data for computer design.

India says it is now willing to sign the recently negotiated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, already signed by more than 140 nations, which prohibits all testing of nuclear weapons.

India had refused to sign before, arguing that the ban would only cement the advantage that the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, as long-standing nuclear powers, have over developing countries that have not built up a nuclear stockpile.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers suggested that if anything, this week’s tests seriously hurt the already uncertain prospects for Senate ratification of the test-ban treaty. Helms, for example, said the explosions had shown the test-ban treaty was “scarcely more than a sham.” He pledged to block Senate ratification until India had rolled back its nuclear weapons program.

U.S. officials made it clear that Washington intends to maintain the new sanctions despite New Delhi’s assertion that the current round of tests is over. Under the law, only Congress can lift the restrictions.

Besides suspending U.S. aid, the administration said it also plans to hold up billions of dollars of new trade financing guarantees from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and investment insurance from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp.

Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, briefing reporters on the administration’s package, said the sanctions could cost India as much as $20 billion in U.S. and international aid, depending on what New Delhi tries to borrow from international lenders.

Clinton also is contemplating canceling a visit to India and Pakistan that he had been considering for autumn.

Washington also was trying to persuade U.S. allies to impose similar sanctions, but officials conceded that they were having little success.

Japan, a longtime opponent of nuclear testing by any nation, announced Wednesday that it was halting about $30 million in aid to India--a largely symbolic gesture. U.S. allies in Europe, including Russia, appeared reluctant to take even token steps.

China today issued a statement expressing shock and condemning Wednesday’s blasts. The Foreign Ministry called the tests “a heavy blow” and tantamount to India “looking down on” efforts by the international community to ban nuclear testing and stop nuclear proliferation.

Clinton also is expected to press allied leaders to issue a strong statement condemning the Indian action when they meet in Birmingham, England, this weekend for their annual economic summit.

Berger told reporters that, while India had declared the current round of tests at an end, “I don’t believe that it has said that it will never test again.”

U.S. officials also hinted strongly that Indian officials had misled them by asserting during recent talks between the two sides that India would continue to show restraint in nuclear weapons proliferation. Berger said Indian officials had not been “forthright” in discussing their plans before the blasts.

U.S. officials also warned that Washington would impose the same kinds of sanctions on Pakistan--in addition to those put in place in 1990--if that country stages new nuclear tests.

Although the latest round of explosions in the desert wasteland surprised many Indians, initial indications were that the government would be able to maintain a substantial body of public support for its actions. A nationwide poll published Wednesday by The Times of India showed 82% of respondents believed that the country should build nuclear weapons immediately.

And nationalist sentiment ran so strong after the tests that it seemed to sweep up even the most vocal proponents of peace.

“We do not play your game,” said Rajiv Vora, a scholar at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, named for the Indian apostle of nonviolence. “The U.S. wants to be the final arbiter of who has nuclear weapons in the world, and we will not let this happen.”

In Bombay, dozens of young supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party pierced their fingertips and wrote their signatures in blood in support of India’s nuclear tests.

Still, there were signs that some of the initial support may soon wear thin.

The leading index on the Bombay stock exchange plunged by 163 points, or 4%, Wednesday as investors worried that the new sanctions would stifle India’s emerging economy.

Filkins reported from New Delhi, Shogren from Berlin and Pine from Washington.

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