The Indian government yesterday followed up its nuclear tests by increasing military spending, while China warned it might resume nuclear tests.
The regional nuclear crisis showed no sign of easing, with Pakistan declaring it was pushing ahead with plans for a new long-range missile to carry nuclear warheads. It rejected an Indian offer of talks.
In a sign of the mounting international concern, Japan said it might offer to host peace talks between India and Pakistan while the Bangladeshi leader, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, offered to go to both countries.
India, which tested five nuclear bombs last month, increased military spending in its budget for the fiscal year ending March 1999 by 14 per cent to $10 billion. "There can be no compromise in our defence preparedness," the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, told parliament.
He said in his budget speech that he was increasing defence expenditure "substantially" by $1.2 billion, and would increase it further during the year if necessary.
New Delhi defied international opinion in conducting its nuclear tests, which provoked a tit-for-tat response from Pakistan last week.
A senior Chinese foreign ministry official said China could not rule out the possibility of resuming nuclear tests if the danger posed by a nuclear arms race in India and Pakistan worsened.
But he stressed that Beijing remained "serious" about its commitment to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which it signed in 1996.
India highlighted a threat from China in justifying its tests and the Chinese official said this made it difficult for Beijing to rule out any possibility.
The CTBT, which both India and Pakistan have refused to sign, allows signatory nations to quit the treaty if their "supreme national interests" are at stake, he said. Ahead of India's nuclear tests on May 11th and 13th, the Indian Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, outraged Beijing by stating that China - not Pakistan - was his country's number-one threat.
China condemned India's nuclear tests as an attempt to gain "hegemony" over South Asia, but analysts say the reaction would have been milder had India not used China to explain the need for nuclear weapons. But it still blamed India for the crisis.
India accuses China of helping Pakistan develop nuclear arms and missile technology, a charge the official vehemently denied. "It would be most ridiculous for China to proliferate nuclear weapons. . . Nobody wants a nuclear country on its border," he said.
Pakistani scientists who masterminded last week's six underground nuclear tests said the country's sophisticated missile programme would be stepped up. Dr Samar Mobarik Mand, the head of Pakistan's missile programme, said the Shaheen II (Eagle) missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles), would be ready for a test flight within a year.
Dr Mand also told Monday's edition of The Nation daily that the Shaheen I missile, with a range of 700 kilometres (435 miles) and the ability to carry nuclear weapons, could be tested within days.
Pakistan's ambassador to Ireland, Mr Said Dehlavi, who resides in Paris, is to meet the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, today, writes David Shanks.