[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.

                          ____________________