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P-5 urges India, Pakistan to start talking

Foreign ministers of the world's five major nuclear powers have urged India and Pakistan to meet at the bargaining table and refrain from intensifying their dangerous nuclear arms race.

"We have no illusions,'' US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters after an emergency meeting yesterday with her counterparts from Britain, China, France and Russia. "But the process has begun.''

A joint statement demanded the South Asian neighbours refrain from further nuclear tests and resolve their differences with direct talks.

Albright said such testing left the people of India and Pakistan less secure and cost both nations respect around the world.

"They might not have expected this kind of very widespread condemnation of what they have done,'' she said.

The ministers said the two nations also didn't make it into the so-called "nuclear club,'' which is restricted to the five nations by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by 186 nations, not including India or Pakistan.

To allow them into the club would, in effect, reward them for testing nuclear weapons and encourage other nations to defy global arms reduction efforts, the ministers said.

"India and Pakistan do not have the status of nuclear weapons states,'' the statement said.

The ministers called for direct negotiations between India and Pakistan on such issues as Kashmir.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said India and Pakistan must take the lead in solving their own differences.

In a pointed reference to India's role in setting off the exchange of nuclear tests, Tang said, "It is up to the one who tied the knot to untie it.''

The communique threatened no new sanctions, but urged the two nations to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to refrain from exporting nuclear weapons and missile technology or expanding their own nuclear arsenals.

"We are prepared to help India and Pakistan maintain peace if they are prepared to do the right thing,'' said Albright.

The ministers did not discuss sanctions, which the United States has been alone in imposing.

US officials said Albright wanted to make sure Russia's traditional leanings toward India and China's support for Pakistan did not prevent the five powers from producing a strong joint statement.

The statement, hammered out on Wednesday night by experts from the five countries, was approved "without change or controversy'' by the ministers, according to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

UNI

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