India Tests 2 More Bombs Nuclear Explosions Trigger U.S. Sanctions

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

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

The announcement 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 leaders of the largest industrial nations.

Administration officials said the president had received word of the two new tests - the fourth and fifth conducted by India this week - only hours before. They said he had made the sanctions 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 ordered U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot to fly to Islamabad to confer with Sharif and other Pakistani officials Friday.

The United States has imposed limited sanctions on Pakistan for underground testing it conducted in 1990.

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

The spate of U.S. economic sanctions against India will cut off $144 million in U.S. economic and military aid, bar American 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 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 press reports portraying him as waffling helped change his mind.

Word of the two explosions led to new 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 was rolled back.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also condemned India, saying he was confident Congress would fully support the president’s decision to impose sanctions.

He called India’s action extraordinarily reckless and destabilizing.

In New Delhi, however, the Indian government remained unrepentant.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari 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 were set off at the Pohkhran range 330 miles southwest of the capital. India said no radioactivity was released.

Inderfurth told Congress that Indian officials had said the explosions - which they described as less than a kiloton in size - were necessary to establish India’s capability and generate data for computer design.

The pact India says it is now willing to sign is the recently negotiated 150-nation Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all testing of nuclear weapons.

India had refused to sign before, arguing that the ban would only cement the advantage the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and other 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 current nuclear weapons program.

U.S. officials made it clear the United States 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.

The administration also said it 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. Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, 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 tried to borrow from international lenders.

Clinton also is considering canceling a visit to India and Pakistan that he had been considering for autumn, although Berger said the president had made no decision on that yet.

Washington also was trying to persuade other 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 $30 million in aid to India - a largely symbolic gesture, and the European allies and Russia appeared reluctant to take even token steps.