Surprise nuclear tests by India yesterday provoked shock, apprehension and disappointment from the world community and a pledge from rival Pakistan that it would make its own defences impregnable.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Mr Gohar Ayub Khan, said: "The Prime Minister assures the people of Pakistan that Pakistan's defence will be made impregnable against any Indian threat, be it nuclear or conventional."
But China was weighing its words and there was no instant reaction from Beijing, whose official news agency reported the tests without comment. India has fought three wars against Pakistan and one with China.
A "deeply disappointed" United States said it would formally protest to India over the underground tests, which its spokesman, Mr Mike McCurry, said "fly in the face" of international efforts for a global ban on nuclear testing, and urged Pakistan not to respond with its own nuclear tests.
Washington could impose sanctions on India, while the G8 group of powerful nations - some of whom are worried that the tests could provoke a nuclear arms race in the region - will debate how to react to the tests this weekend.
In Dublin, the Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed "dismay and deep concern", saying the tests represented a "serious and worrying setback to nuclear non-proliferation and to the prospect of the elimination of nuclear weapons".
Mr Andrews said the tests "run in the face of world public opinion which has so strongly and for so long demanded the ending of all nuclear test explosions for all time and in all environments". It was regrettable that India had not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Ireland would raise the matter directly with the Indian government, and called on India to "live up to its responsibilities to prevent any increase in tension or a nuclear arms race in south Asia".
A visit by President Clinton to India planned for later this year - partly to help coax both Indian and Pakistan into signing up to nuclear non-proliferation - is no longer sure to go ahead. "It is impossible to tell what the impact is on the trip," Mr McCurry said.
Leaders of the world's most powerful industrial nations, the US, Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Japan and Russia, will discuss how to react at their May 15th-17th meeting in Birmingham, the Canadian Foreign Minister, Mr Lloyd Axworthy, said.
Direct US aid to India, US support for World Bank and IMF loans, American private bank loans and credits to India and US government financing of loans all could be affected. Pakistan's former prime minister, Ms Benazir Bhutto, said her country was capable of quickly replying to the tests with explosions of its own.
All Indian political parties congratulated the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, on yesterday's tests. Government officials did not rule out more tests.
The Prime Minister said the tests at the nuclear testing ground at Pokhran, around 600 miles west of New Delhi, were with a "fission device, a low-yield device and a thermo-nuclear device".
At a hurriedly summoned press conference, he said there was no release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.
Later, the Prime Minister's principal secretary, Mr Brijesh Mishra, said the tests were "critical to India's security needs", providing a useful database for designing nuclear weapons of "different yields for different applications and for different delivery systems". Nuclear tests likely to mean a dangerous arms race in the region; Pakistan `reserves right' to act:
