[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 59 (Tuesday, May 12, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3079-H3081]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INDIA'S NUCLEAR TESTS: A CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under a previous order of the
House, the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega) is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, India conducted three underground
nuclear tests in its Pokhran Range with a combined force of up to 20
kilotons. Although the Indian Government claims the underground
explosions did not result in radioactive fallout, the fallout from the
international community has been incendiary, marked by protests and
condemnation.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, that India's return to nuclear weapons testing
is highly regrettable, as it threatens stability not only in south
Asia, but the whole world, and this latest action by India clearly
undercuts nuclear nonproliferation efforts around the world.
While these developments with India are unfortunate, Mr. Speaker,
many would find India's actions to be both understandable as well as
predictable. In refusing to join in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
and Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, India has long argued that the
treaties are discriminatory and clearly one-sided because they maintain
and perpetuate a world of nuclear haves and have-nots, a world where
five nuclear nations clearly have distinctive advantages over all other
countries.
To remedy this inequality, India has rightfully called for global
nuclear disarmament and verifiable arrangements for the elimination of
nuclear weapons arsenals by the superpowers.
Since its 1974 test, as a sign of good faith, India has forgone
nuclear weapons testing. For almost 2\1/2\ decades, India has
demonstrated nuclear restraint, while five nuclear nations, the United
States, Russia, France, Great Britain and China, have conducted scores
of tests in the face of worldwide disapproval.
Now, Mr. Speaker, citing legitimate security concerns with nuclear-
armed China and Pakistan's close alliance with Beijing, it is not
surprising that India has chosen to exercise the nuclear option.
Because of this, there is fear now that Pakistan may follow suit and
test a nuclear device of its own.
Mr. Speaker, the only way to stop this spiraling proliferation of
nuclear weapons around the world is for the nuclear nations to take
responsibility and set an example. How can the United States and the
other four members of the nuclear club continue to argue and to urge
other countries to forgo nuclear weapons while reserving the right to
keep our own nuclear weapons for ready use? If this is not the height
of hypocrisy, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what is.
To put it another way, Mr. Speaker, this is like having the five
nuclear nations tell India to tie its legs and hands by not becoming a
member of the nuclear club, and any time China feels like threatening
India with its nuclear arsenal, it is perfectly all right because it is
within the spirit of the Nonproliferation Treaty.
With the Cold War over, it is madness, Mr. Speaker, that the United
States and Russia alone still have over 5,000 nuclear missiles poised
to fire within seconds at each other or any other country that may pose
a threat and, still, over 15,000 more warheads on operational alert. In
total, over 36,000 nuclear bombs threaten the existence of this planet.
Mr. Speaker, it is time that the nuclear powers negotiate a nuclear
weapons convention that requires the phased elimination of all nuclear
weapons within a time frame incorporating proper verification and
enforcement provisions.
Moreover, Mr. Speaker, the former commander of the U.S. Strategic Air
Command, General Lee Butler, and a former Supreme Commander of all NATO
forces, General Andrew Goodpaster, representing a group of 60 retired
generals and admirals, have concluded the only way to end a nuclear
threat is to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. As General Butler has
stated, and I quote,
Proliferation cannot be contained in a world where a
handful of self-appointed nations both arrogate to themselves
the privilege of owning nuclear weapons, and extol the
ultimate security assurances they assert such weapons convey.
Mr. Speaker, it is time for the United States to show real leadership
as the only true superpower in the world. We have no match for our
military capabilities, both in terms of conventional or nuclear weapons
resistance. From a position of strength, it is incumbent that we have
the courage envisioned to initiate negotiations for the elimination of
all nuclear weapons by the nuclear powers to free the world of this
threat.
Mr. Speaker, if we fail to do so, it is clear that the example of
India's testing yesterday will herald the beginning of a new chapter of
nuclear proliferation that will inevitably result in a nuclear tragedy
of unimaginable suffering.
Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record three articles relating to the
topic I have been speaking on this evening.
[[Page H3080]]
[From the New York Times, May 12, 1998]
India Sets 3 Nuclear Blasts, Defying a Worldwide Ban; Tests Bring a
Sharp Outcry
Countries with a declared nuclear weapons capacity: United
States, Russia, France, Britain, and China.
Countries known to have nuclear weapons capacity: India,
Pakistan, and Israel.
Countries seeking nuclear weapons capacity--Iran: The State
Department believes that Iran is actively developing nuclear
weapons, in part with its civilian nuclear energy program.
Iraq: The State Department believes that Iraq aspires to have
nuclear weapons but has stopped development because of the
United Nations inspections.
North Korea: The Clinton Administration believes that North
Korea was actively developing nuclear weapons until 1994,
when an agreement was reached to freeze the country's known
nuclear weapons development activity.
____
Indians Risk Invoking U.S. Law Imposing Big Economic Penalties
(By Tim Weiner)
Washington, May 11.--India's nuclear tests today brought
into play an American law that could block billions of
dollars of aid to India, and it prompted American officials
to plead with Pakistan not to intensify a regional arms race
by conducting its own atomic tests.
Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, said he
and other top officials were scrutinizing the never-used 1994
Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, a Federal law which
orders President Clinton to impose severe penalties on
nations conducting nuclear tests or selling nuclear weapons.
The law on nuclear tests covers nations that are developing
nuclear weapons but excludes the declared nuclear powers,
Russia, China, Great Britain and France.
The law requires Mr. Clinton to cut off almost all
Government aid to India, bar American banks from making loans
to its Government, stop exports of American products with
military uses such as machine tools and computers--and, most
importantly, oppose aid to India by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. India is the world's largest
borrower from the World Bank, with more than $40 billion in
loans; it is expecting about $3 billion in loans and credits
this year. Last year, of $19.1 billion of the World Bank
committed to developing nations, India received more than 1.5
billion. The International Monetary Fund has no programs
under way with India, a spokesman for the fund said.
Direct United States assistance to India has not exceeded
several hundred million dollars annually in recent years.
This year, it included $41 million in licenses to buy
military equipment and $51 million in development aid.
The tests ``came as a complete shock, a bolt out of the
blue,'' one senior Administration official said. ``It's a
fork in the road,'' the official said. ``Will India and
Pakistan be locked in a nuclear arms race? Will the Chinese
resume nuclear testing now?''
Although American officials expressed shock, India's
governing Hindu nationalist party announced that it would
review the country's nuclear policy the day before it took
power in March. Soon after it won the election, the party
said it intended to ``induct'' nuclear weapons into
India's arsenal. ``Induct'' is a technical term meaning
formally placing such weapons in military stockpiles, and
American officials said today that they had not foreseen
that India would take the provocative step of resuming
testing.
Nor did United States intelligence agencies pick up any
signs that the tests were imminent.
United States officials strongly rebuked India while urging
its neighbor, Pakistan, not to conduct its own test. Mr.
Berger warned against ``a new round of escalation.''
President Clinton was ``deeply distressed by the
announcement of three nuclear tests,'' his spokesman, Michael
D. McCurry, said today, and ``has authorized formal
presentation of our displeasure to be made to the Government
in New Delhi.''
The nuclear tests pose a challenge for Mr. Clinton, whose
policy toward India and his scheduled trip there this fall
both now require rethinking, Administration officials said.
``Sanctions are mandatory,'' said Senator John Glenn, the
law's author and an Ohio Democrat. The only way to delay them
is if the President tells Congress that immediate imposition
would harm national security, and that delay can only last 30
days.
``It would be hard to avoid the possibility of sanctions,''
a State Department official said. ``There is no wiggle room
in the law.''
If the World Bank loans to India are cut off as a result of
United States pressure, that ``would have serious
implications for their budget, serious detrimental effects,''
a World Bank official said today.
While the United States cannot tell the World Bank what to
do, ``we have a fairly heavy vote,'' a senior State
Department official said.
Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who heads the
Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and
South Asian affairs, urged the Administration to punish India
under the law. ``It's an enormous negative blow to our
relationship with India,'' he said. ``It'll destabilize the
region.''
The British Government does not have a similar law
mandating sanctions, but India is the largest recipient of
British foreign aid.
Henry Sokolski, a former senior Pentagon official involved
in limiting the spread of nuclear arms, said: ``India has
just dug a big hole for itself by doing this test, a
military, political and economic hole. Its banking system's
in a world of hurt now. It's about to get a death blow.''
The shock of the tests was amplified by the fact that the
nation's top experts on the spread of nuclear arms only
learned about them this morning from news agencies and
television networks, not from the Central Intelligence
Agency. Several of those Government experts expressed fury at
the United States intelligence community and the Indian
Government for failing to provide advance notice of the
event.
Government experts said tonight they were still trying to
come to grips with the meaning of the tests.
``There are two scenarios,'' a senior Administration
official said. The optimists at the White House believe that
``the Indians will say that now that they've secured
confidence in their nuclear weapons stockpile, they are
prepared to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.''
The pessimists think the Indians ``now have decided they're
going to be an open nuclear power,'' he said. ``They will
endure international sanctions. They accept that they and the
Pakistanis will be locked in a nuclear arms race.''
[From the New York Times, May 12, 1998]
India Stages 3 Nuclear Tests, Stirring Worldwide Outcry--Pakistan Hints
It Might Follow Suit as Answer to the New Premier
(By John F. Burns)
New Delhi, May 11--Nearly 24 years after it detonated its
only nuclear explosion, India conducted three underground
nuclear tests today at a site in the country's north-western
desert. The move appeared to signal India's determination to
abandon decades of ambiguity in favor of openly declaring
that it has nuclear weapons.
After less than two months in office, Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee, leader of a Hindu nationalist party that has
been an advocate of India's embracing nuclear weapons as a
step toward great-power status, emerged on the lawn of his
residence here and read a statement. Speaking in the late
afternoon, he said the tests had been carried out barely an
hour earlier at the Pokharan testing range in Rajasthan
state, 350 miles southwest of New Delhi, where India's first
nuclear test was conducted on May 18, 1974.
With the tests, the Government cast aside a generation of
caution and opted instead for a course that brought immediate
international condemnation from a world that has officially
scorned nuclear testing since 1996. The tests also open the
possibility of a costly and dangerous nuclear arms race with
India's archrival Pakistan.
The tests, and next step that they appeared to imply--
arming Indian missiles with nuclear warheads--were almost
certain to provoke economic sanctions under United States
law, and to raise tensions with China, a nuclear power that
has been described as a greater long-term threat to India
than Pakistan is. China had no immediate official reaction to
the news from India.
But after waiting 50 years to gain power, the Hindu
nationalists appeared to have found all this less compelling
than the urge to stake a claim for India as a great power,
eager to equate its vast population with a matching military
and political muscle. The nationalists may also have gambled
on the tests' boosting their popularity, propelling them
toward an outright parliamentary majority in the future.
Still, Mr. Vajpayee seemed to reflect the heavy stakes in
the somber tone of his announcement. The 72-year-old Prime
Minister restricted himself to a sparse, technical account of
the tests, barely looking up from his text as he did so, then
walked back into his residence without taking any questions.
``I have a brief announcement to make,'' he said. ``Today,
at 1545 hours, India conducted three underground nuclear
tests in the Pokharan range. The tests conducted were with a
fission device, a low-yield device, and a thermonuclear
device.''
``The measured yields are in line with expected values,''
he said. ``Measurements have confirmed that there was no
release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. These were
contained explosions like in the experiment conducted in May
1974. I warmly congratulate the scientists and engineers who
have carried out the successful tests. Thank you very much
indeed.''
Mr. Vajpayee's principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra, said
afterward that the tests had established ``that India has a
proven capability for a weaponized nuclear program.''
Mr. Mishra said the tests would help scientists design
``nuclear weapons of different yields for different
applications and for different delivery systems''--meaning,
Indian experts said, that the explosions were meant to test
different types of nuclear warheads for India's fast-
developing missile program, which has a mix of delivery
vehicles to reach targets as close as Pakistan and as distant
as China.
The tests were widely welcomed in India; with hardly any
immediate dissent from opposition political parties and
little sign of the Gandhian pacifism that was a strong
element in Indian policy in the early years after
independence in 1947.
Even Mr. Vajpayee's predecessor as Prime Minister, I.K.
Gujral, a moderate who
[[Page H3081]]
blocked the tests during his year in office, said: ``It was
always known that India had the capability to do this. The
tests only confirm what was already known.''
But the outcry from outside India was almost universal,
with dozens of governments expressing anger that India had
broken an informal moratorium on nuclear testing that went
into effect in 1996, when India and Pakistan stood aside as
scores of other nations met at the United Nations to endorse
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits all
nuclear tests. The treaty is widely regarded as a key step
toward halting the spread of nuclear weapons.
The Indian tests drew immediate condemnation from the
Clinton Administration, which said the United States was
``deeply disappointed'' and was reviewing trade and financial
sanctions against India under American nonproliferation laws;
from other Western nations, including Britain, which voiced
its ``dismay'' and Germany, which called the tests ``a slap
in the face'' for 149 countries that have signed the treaty,
and from Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General,
who issued a statement expressing his ``deep regret.''
But perhaps the most significant reaction came from
Pakistan, which raised fears that years of effort by the
United States to prevent an unrestrained nuclear arms race on
the subcontinent were on the verge of collapse. In the
absence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was visiting
Central Asia, Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan hinted that
Pakistan, which has had a covert nuclear weapons program
since the early 1970's, would consider conducting a nuclear
test of its own, its first.
``Pakistan reserves the right to take all appropriate
measures for its security.'' Mr. Ayub Khan said in a
statement to the Senate in Islamabad, the capital, that came
amid demands from right-wing politicians and hard-line
Islamic groups for an immediate nuclear test.
He laid the blame for the Indian tests on Western nations,
mainly the United States, for not moving to head them off
after Pakistan raised an alarm in Washington last month about
the nuclear plans of the Vajpayee Government. When it took
office in March after an election, the Government led pledged
that it would review India's policy with a view to
``inducting'' nuclear weapons into its armed forces.
``We are surprised at the naivete of the Western world, and
also of the United States, that they did not take the
cautionary signals that we were flashing to them,'' the
Pakistani Foreign Minister said in an interview with the BBC.
He added: ``I think they could have restrained India. Now
India has thumbed its nose to the Western world and the
entire international community.''
Pakistan demanded that the United States impose harsh
sanctions against India. Benazir Bhutto, a former Prime
Minister, said in a BBC interview in London that her
Government had a contingency plan in 1996 to carry out a
nuclear test if India did. She said the ability still
existed, and should be used. ``If we don't, India will go
ahead and adopt aggressive designs on us,'' she said.
The Vajpayee Government's decision to conduct the tests so
soon after taking office appeared to catch the world's other
established nuclear weapons states--the United States,
Britain, China, France and Russia--by surprise. Although the
test site lies in flat desert terrain, under cloudless skies
at this time of the year, India seems to have succeeded in
keeping preparations secret, even from American spy
satellites.
The surprise was all the greater because the Clinton
Administration succeeded in heading off an earlier plan by
India to stage nuclear tests in December 1995.
This time, the Vajpayee Government appeared keen to
heighten the symbolism of the tests, staging them on the same
Buddhist festival day as the first Indian test in 1974.
According to nuclear scientists who oversaw the first test,
the code message flashed to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
confirming the test's success was, ``The Buddha is smiling.''
But Indian commentators noted that Mr. Vajpayee's statement
differed in one important respect from Mrs. Gandhi's
announcement nearly a quarter of a century ago. Mrs. Gandhi
had described the test at Pokharan as a ``peaceful''
explosion, setting the theme for all subsequent Indian policy
statements on the country's nuclear program until today.
By avoiding the word ``peaceful'' in his announcement
today, Mr. Vajpayee appeared to signal that the days of
artful ambiguity about India's plans are at an end. For
years, the Hindu nationalists, led by Mr. Vajpayee's
Bharatiya Janata Party, have called for India to take a more
assertive role in its dealings with the world, one that the
nationalists believe is more appropriate for a nation with a
5,000-year history and a population, now nearing 980 million,
that means nearly one in every five human beings is an
Indian.
In statements issued after Mr. Vajpayee's announcement, the
Indian Government sought to take some of the political sting
out of the tests, saying that it held to the long-established
Indian position of favoring ``a total, global elimination of
nuclear weapons,'' and that it had not closed the door to
some form of Indian participation in the test ban treaty if
established nuclear powers committed themselves to this goal.
But diplomats said this appeared to be mainly aimed at
dissuading the United States from imposing sanctions.
The core of the new Government's thinking seemed to be
represented by Kushabhau Thakre, the president of the
Bharatiya Janata Party, who said the tests showed that the
Vajpayee Government ``unlike previous regimes, will not give
in to international pressure.''
Strategists who have the ear of the Hindu nationalists have
argued that India's deference to American pressures put the
country at risk of being permanently stunted as a nuclear
power. According to one recent estimate, by the Institute for
Science and International Security, a Washington-based
research group, India has stockpiled enough weapons-grade
plutonium to make 74 nuclear warheads, while Pakistan has
enough for about 10 weapons. A parallel race to develop
missiles that could carry nuclear warheads accelerated last
month when Pakistan test-fired a missile it says has a range
of nearly 1,000 miles.
But many Indians believe that the message of today's tests
was intended more for China than for Pakistan. Although
Pakistan has fought three wars with India since the partition
of the subcontinent in 1947 and is engaged in a long-running
proxy conflict with New Delhi in the contested territory of
Kashmir, Indian political and military strategists have
concluded that even a nuclear-armed Pakistan, with 130
million people and an economy ravaged by corruption, does not
pose as great a long-term threat to India as China does.
China is even more populous than India, has long-running
border disputes that cover tens of thousands of square miles
of Indian-held territory, and has an expanding arsenal of
nuclear missiles that it has been developing since the
1960's, with none of the pressures from Western powers to
desist that India has faced. Today's tests came barely a week
after India's Defense Minister, George Fernandes, warned that
China, not Pakistan, is India's ``potential enemy No. 1.''
[From the Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1998]
India Plays With Nuclear Fire
India's new government took power two months ago with a
hard foreign policy line, including the appalling threat to
develop nuclear weapons. Even more shocking was Monday's
announcement that three underground nuclear devices had been
detonated in a state bordering archenemy Pakistan.
Because the coalition government is dominated by the Hindu
nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Muslims inside
and outside India have looked with alarm at the new regime.
Pakistan, overwhelmingly Muslim, has fought three wars with
India since 1947; in April it announced the successful test-
firing of a new missile that could reach deeper into India.
That no doubt prompted India's hawks to brandish the nuclear
sword.
Monday's explosions, the first major explosions since China
and France conducted nuclear tests in 1996, raise the stakes
again in South Asia, a restive region long considered
vulnerable to nuclear war. Pakistan, predictably, pledged to
take ``all appropriate measures for its security.'' Nuclear
experts believe that the Islamabad regime is capable of
assembling a nuclear weapon on short notice. China, which
fought a war with India in 1962, obviously must be concerned
by Monday's news.
Previous Indian governments, most of them led by the
Congress (I) Party, insisted that New Delhi's only previous
nuclear test, in 1974, was a ``peaceful'' experiment. The new
government, in contrast, boasted that Monday's tests
demonstrated a nuclear weapons capability, a message that
rang loudly in Pakistan. Although China denies it,
intelligence sources contend that Beijing has helped
Pakistan's nuclear program, also tabbed the ``Islamic bomb''
due to funding from some Arab nations.
The United States was quick to condemn Monday's tests and
clearly will have to rethink President Clinton's planned trip
to India and Pakistan later this year. Washington and its
allies should make clear to the two Asian nations that
weapons tests and hostile rhetoric inflame an already
dangerous situation.
____________________