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- Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to call to the attention of my colleagues two articles from the December 15, 1995, New York Times and the December 16, 1995, Washington Post which report that India may be preparing for another nuclear weapon test near Pokhran, India.
- My colleagues may recall that India exploded a nuclear device at this very site back in 1974. Since then, India's nuclear program has advanced rapidly making significant progress in the development of ballistic missiles.
- All these activities on the part of India pose a direct threat to Pakistan's security. Despite these threatening moves, Pakistan has displayed considerable restraint. In fact, Pakistan has indicated on numerous occasions its willingness to accept nonproliferation measures, including accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, if India were to accept the same. While Pakistan, who has been a longtime ally of the United States, has come under United States sanctions, India has been allowed to pursue its nuclear program without any consequence. Indian activities at the Pokhran site not only threaten security and stability in South Asia, but also adversely impact United States efforts to have a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty concluded during 1996.
- Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that India should give up its nuclear ambitions and cooperate with Pakistan and its other neighbors in South Asia in banishing forever the chances of nuclear war in South Asia.
Washington, Dec. 14: American intelligence experts suspect India is preparing for its first nuclear test since 1974, Government officials said today.
The United States is working to discourage it, fearing a political chain reaction among nuclear nations.
In recent weeks, spy satellites have recorded scientific and technical activity at the Pokaran test site in the Rajasthan desert in India. But intelligence experts said they could not tell whether the activity involved preparations for exploding a nuclear bomb or some other experiment to increase India's expertise in making nuclear weapons.
`We're not sure that they're up to,' a Government official said. `The big question is what their motive is. If their motive is to get scientific knowledge, it might be months or years before they do the test. If it's for purely politician reasons, it could be this weekend. We don't know the answer to those questions.'
Shive Mukherjee, Press Minister of the Indian Embassy here, said today that the activities at the nuclear test site were army exercises whose `movements have been absurdly misinterpreted.'
The Congress Party of India, which has governed the country most of the years since independence in 1947, is facing a serious challenge from a right-wing Hindu nationalist party, United States Government officials say a nuclear weapons test could be used by the Congress Party as a symbol of its political potency.
Despite efforts to persuade the world's nuclear powers to sign a comprehensive test ban treaty, China and France have tested nuclear weapons in recent months. If India follows suit, its neighbor, Pakistan, with which it has tense relations, may also test a nuclear weapon, Government and civilian experts said. Neither country has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
`It's going to have a nuclear snowball effect,' said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control in Washington and a leader civilian expert on the spread of nuclear weapons. `It also jeopardizes the possibility that the world will sign a comprehensive test ban treaty next year.'
A State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that if India exploded a nuclear bomb, it `would be a matter of great concern and a serious setback to nonproliferation efforts.'
`The United States is committed to the early completion of a comprehensive test ban,' the official said. `We are observing a moratorium on nuclear testing and we have called upon all nations to demonstrate similar restraint.'
But not all nations have heard the call.
India says publicly that it wants the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. But its nuclear hawks argue that the United States and Russia will never live up to that ideal and that a comprehensive test ban that is not linked to drastic reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals could leave India a second-rate or third-rate nuclear power.
Mr. Milhollin said India did not have a great archive of test data for nuclear weapons that could be mounted on a warhead and placed on a missile. `Once the test ban treaty comes in, they will be data-poor,' he said. `A test now would supply them data, it would be a tremendous plus for the Congress Party, it would give them a big boost in the elections.'
Political pressure for a nuclear test is building among India's right wing. `They are saying: `What are we sitting around for? Why should we sign a test ban treaty not linked to the reduction of nuclear weapons' ' said Selig S. Harrison, an expert on South Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In 1974 India exploded what was believed to be a Hiroshima-sized bomb equal to 12,000 tons of TNT, which is called a `peaceful nuclear explosion.' It renewed its program some years later, and in 1989 the Director of Central Intelligence, William H. Webster, testified that India had resumed research on thermonuclear weapons.
While India has sought to limit the nuclear abilities of China, it is most concerned about the nuclear-weapons program of Pakistan, although Pakistan has not acknowledged it has one. The two countries have had three wars, unending political tensions and constant border disputes since they were formed by the partition of India in 1947 after its independence from Britain.
A subnuclear experiment, which would not involve a nuclear explosion, might not have the political effect of a full-fledged detonation. But Administration officials said they feared that any test would create pressure on Pakistan to follow suit.
`We look at this in a balance with Pakistan,' a White House official said:
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U.S. officials are concerned that India may be preparing to set off its first nuclear blast since 1974, an act they fear could ratchet up a nuclear arms race with neighboring Pakistan.
Both countries are said by Washington to be working busily on improvements to their small nuclear stockpiles, including developing new designs for more powerful weapons. Pakistan is relying on significant assistance from China to construct a reactor that will give it access to plutonium for use in such arms.
U.S. officials said these developments made the region the most likely nuclear flashpoint in the world, even though the risk of war between the two long-standing enemies is not considered imminent.
The U.S. concerns about India are based on recent spy satellite imagery that recorded what one official described as `activities going beyond what we've seen in the past' at India's Pokaran nuclear test site in the Rajistan desert.
The site has been routinely maintained by India for the past two decades, but U.S. intelligence officials recently noted efforts to clean out a deep underground shaft for lowering a nuclear weapon into the earth. They also noted `possible preparations for instrumentation' of a blast to determine whether it occurred as predicted, the official said.
`We take these preparations very seriously and are in the process of raising the issue with the Indians' at a senior diplomatic level, the official said without providing details. Washington is not aware of any decision by Indian authorities to go through with such a test, he added.
The world's major nuclear powers are attempting to reach accord on the terms of a global nuclear test
ban that could take effect next year, and the alleged Indian preparations may reflect a conviction in New Delhi that steps should be taken before then to improve the country's small nuclear stockpile, the officials said. `We're concerned, obviously, at any signs that any power might be testing a nuclear weapon,' State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said yesterday. `If there were to be an explosive test by India, it would be a dramatic departure from India's own long-standing position against testing [and] a setback to disarmament efforts internationally.'
An Indian government spokesman in New Delhi termed a report yesterday about the test preparations by the New York Times `totally speculative' but stopped short of denying it, according to Reuter news agency. Another Indian official was quoted as saying the site where preparations allegedly are underway is `an area where there are routine exercises always.'
U.S. intelligence officials have said Indian scientists are trying to develop more powerful `boosted' atomic arms as well as a hydrogen bomb.
In Pakistan, they said, construction of a nuclear reactor is continuing at the city of Khushab; China is providing technical advice to the Pakistani engineers and also may be providing vital equipment.
`This may be inconsistent with China's obligations' under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bars the transfer of nuclear components to projects that are not subject to international inspection and also bars any contribution to efforts by non-nuclear states to build nuclear arms, a U.S. official said.
`There is a danger of an eruption, where one state takes a step and the other matches it and goes beyond,' said Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate Leonard S. Spector, a nuclear proliferation expert. `They could claim they have nuclear warheads for their missiles, and declare they are nuclear powers. . . . The whole complexion of this problem could change dramatically.'
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