India has justified its nuclear tests largely by referring to the threat from China, with which it last had outright hostilities more than 30 years ago. The new nationalist-led government hopes that, by playing on western fears of an aggressive and nuclear China, it will garner support and manage to contain hurtful economic sanctions.
In a letter to UN Security Council members Russia, France, Britain and the US, the Indian prime minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, said yesterday that fear of China's nuclear capability had inspired his country's unpopular action. Mistrust between the two neighbours, who fought a war in 1962 over an unresolved border dispute, had prompted India to undertake five nuclear tests. Three took place on Monday and two on Wednesday - at Pokhran in the north-western desert region. Mr Vajpayee also accused China of helping Pakistan - which has fought three wars with India since independence 51 years ago and continued to "sponsor" terrorist activity in the northern states of Kashmir and Punjab - to become a "covert nuclear state".
China, however, said India was using the nuclear tests as its strategy to dominate South Asia. "The international community should adopt a common position in strongly demanding India immediately stop its nuclear development programme."
A Chinese foreign ministry statement in Beijing yesterday said India's five tests showed "brazen contempt" for worldwide efforts to ban the testing and spread of nuclear weapons. The statement accused India of provoking an arms race in South Asia and "slandering " China by claiming it constituted a nuclear threat. "This is groundless," the statement added.
"India's assessment is that fear of China is its trump card in countering diplomatic and economic sanctions," a foreign ministry official said. The entire exercise was predicated on the assumption that the West will not label India a pariah state because it has the potential to be a countervailing force to China. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr Tang Jiaxuan, and the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, agreed about the need for a "clear-cut and firm stance" in a telephone conversation on Wednesday, according to Beijing.
The spokesman said China was working to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and called on India to follow suit.
On July 29th, 1996, China conducted what it said would be its last nuclear test before a self-imposed moratorium which took effect the following day.
The US, Japan, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have imposed sanctions and cancelled aid packages to India worth millions of dollars, while Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have recalled their high commissioners for "consultations". Diplomatic sources said the first inkling of the government's plan to use China as its justification for the nuclear tests came from the Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes' recent statement that Beijing was India's "number-one enemy". Mr Fernandes also claimed that China is transferring nuclear and missile components to Pakistan, circulating maps showing large portions of Indian territory as Chinese, and that there are frequent incursions by People's Army patrols into India.
India's suspicions of a growing Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean region has led to it raising a new naval command on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal and monitoring Beijing's enhanced military co-operation with Burma, which is ruled by a military dictatorship.
Mr Fernandes has also accused China of helping Burma to modernise its naval bases and set up radar stations on islands close to India to monitor Indian missile tests off its eastern coast.
Government officials said the "efficacy" of the China gambit would now depend on back-up measures particularly on the economic front, and would involve opening up India to foreign investment at a swifter pace.
The rupee, meanwhile, fell to a record low 40.70 to the dollar in a panicky market after the various external sanctions were announced.
Pakistan is making preparations for an underground nuclear test that could take place as early as this weekend but is more likely next week, US officials said yesterday.