Details have emerged of the secrecy with which India conducted the scientific work leading up to last week's five underground nuclear tests.
A team of 250 Indian scientists and engineers had been working secretly towards the multiple nuclear blasts in a desert area of Rajasthan state for the past four years. Official sources said the project was initially ready for trials in December 1995, but these were abandoned after Western newspapers reported the plans.
The testing equipment was then moved underground to escape spy satellite detection. The scientists, how- ever, continued visiting the test site - located at Alpha range some 350 miles west of New Delhi - secretly and in small groups. Many travelled from different parts of India where their laboratories were located, under assumed names and identities, frequently changing trains, buses and cars en route.
They were not allowed to inform even their families of their where- abouts. At the site the project team never moved around in groups or indulged in any activity that might at- tract either local attention or that of spy satellites.
The Indian government was defiant, even buoyant, yesterday. "We have the capacity for a big bomb now," the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, told a weekly magazine.
However, there would be no first use and nuclear weapons would be utilised only for self-defence, the prime minister declared.
Mr Vajpayee said India needed a deterrent because of tension with its nuclear-capable neighbours, China and Pakistan, with whom it has been to war (thrice with Pakistan and once with China) since independence 51 years ago.
Domestic reaction to the tests remained gleeful, with Mr Vajpayee being hailed as a hero. The stock market recovered moderately and, after severe fluctuations, the rupee returned to its overnight value of 40.55 to the dollar.
Patrick Smyth adds from Brussels: The Indian tests have dangerously unbalanced security in the region, the President of the European Commission, Mr Jacques Santer, told G8 leaders last night.
