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Pakistan readies to go nuclear

Available indications are that Pakistan is readying to test its own nuclear devices, and that such a test could happen as early as Sunday.

Straws in the wind, to that effect, have been coming both from US spy satellites, which have detected unusual activity around the Chagai Hills area in the Baluchistan desert.

As and when this happens, it will be Pakistan's first nuclear test, though intelligence reports indicate that the nation has been nuclear capable since the early 1990s, and is learnt to possess enough fissile material for about a dozen warheads capable of being mounted on missiles.

Pakistan today dismissed as ''irrelevant'' the sanctions imposed on India and Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan called the testing just ''short of a declaration of war.''

''What India has done is short of a declaration of war, the provocation has been that extreme,'' he told Associated Press in an interview.

At the end of a three-hour meeting Pakistan's cabinet declared that the security of the entire region was threatened by India's testing of five separate nuclear devices carried out in the desert bordering Pakistan on Monday and Wednesday.

''Not only Pakistan's, but the security of other countries in this region has been threatened,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Tariq Altaf said.

''Some sanctions have been announced which are pretty irrelevant,'' he said.

Ayub Khan said Pakistan's response ''has to be a calculated choice... To see the pros and cons (but) our policy has been for a balance of power with India.''

He will meet tomorrow with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and General Anthony Zinni, commander of the US central command, who are en route to Pakistan to reinforce Washington's call for restraint.

''They'll talk to us and we will listen,'' Ayub Khan, son of Pakistan's late military dictator Field Marshal Ayub Khan, said.

But Pakistan which has been living with US sanctions since 1990 when Washington cut off $ 650 million worth of aid to it is not worried about sanctions should it decide to explode a bomb, the Pakistan minister said.

''We've gotten used to sanctions... It's nothing new,'' he said.

It is not clear what the US can offer Pakistan to convince it to refrain from testing. There are some in Pakistan who say that as a face saving gesture Washington can recognise Pakistan as a nuclear weapons state if Islamabad agrees not to conduct a nuclear test.

Ayub Khan said that is a possibility and something that Pakistan may be willing to consider.

However, he said there has been no advance warning of what offers, if any, Talbott will be bringing from the US administration in exchange for a promise from Pakistan not to test.

Ayub Khan said his government is under considerable pressure from its people to conduct a test and its rightwing religious lobby has warned against bowing to US pressure.

''We will be in great difficulty,'' if the government chose not to test a nuclear device, he said, adding that the decision will be a political one.

Earlier, reacting to the development, US President Bill Clinton is learnt to have despatched a high-level team to Pakistan in order to persuade Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief to forego nuclear testing. An earlier telephone conversation, wherein the US president painted a dire picture of the possible consequences to Pakistan in the event it tests nuclear, reportedly met with discouraging response from Sharief.

The threat of sanctions, similar to those imposed on India, have been held out to Pakistan as well. Interestingly, whereas India is not due any major loans from the International Monetary Fund, that body has just offered Pakistan a $ 1.5 billion loan, of which only a small fraction has been disbursed. Among other things, Pakistan stands to lose the remainder of the loan, in the event it goes ahead with the testing.

However, the feeling among leading analysts is that threat of sanctions will have as little impact on Pakistan as it had on India. Prime Minister Sharief has been under enormous pressure from the Pakistan military establishment to respond in kind to India's tests this week in Pokhran. Ayub Khan sent a clear signal of the nation's intentions when he told the senate that Pakistan "will not let India's tests go unanswered."

The thinking, however, is that even as his delegation talks to Sharief, Clinton will use his clout to persuade the seven industralised nations of the European Union, slated to meet in Birmingham, England this week, to come down so hard on India that it will serve as a warning to Pakistan.

UNI

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