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'Indian leadership has gone berserk'

Pakistan condemned India's explosion of two more nuclear devices on Wednesday, terming it 'reckless and highly provocative.'

"It seems that the Indian leadership has gone berserk," Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan said in a telephone interview to Associated Press.

Ayub Khan said Pakistan is ''absolutely surprised'' at the United States intelligence agencies's failure to anticipate the tests.

''They (American satellites) didn't pick up on the first one... They didn't even see the activity going on,'' he said.

The West is being loudly criticised in Pakistan for ignoring India's nuclear ambitions and ''naively'' setting the Asian subcontinent on a deadly nuclear arms race.

''...the West, particularly the United States, could have stopped the subcontinent from entering into a nuclear arms race, advanced missile race, conventional arms race... They have not really put in the effort that could have drawn us back from such a situation,'' Ayub Khan said in an interview on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief said the US penalised Pakistan while ignoring signals from India's new government that it was preparing to cross the nuclear threshold, accepting its promise not to explode nuclear devices.

''While dismissing India's officially proclaimed nuclear designs, the world community not only ignored our concerns but also spoke of the assurance given by India that no changes in its nuclear policy were in the offing,'' Sharief said.

The people in Pakistan have been critical of the US because of a perceived discrimination against Islamic Pakistan, which has been under US sanctions since 1990. That year, within months of the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, the US administration had cut off all military and humanitarian aid to Pakistan because it believed that Islamabad had a nuclear bomb.

During the Afghan war, Pakistan was the arena for US-backed Islamic insurgents. Then, Pakistan was considered the Western world's frontline state against the spread of Communism.

Prolonged sanctions have made many in Pakistan wary of relying on the US. In fact, Lt General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's secret service, had warned against relying on the US to guarantee Pakistan's security.

''We cannot depend on America... They have repeatedly let us down,'' said Lt General Gul, ''Unless Pakistan now comes up with a response, the deterrence value will disappear which could push us towards war.''

Former Pakistan president Farooq Leghari accused the West of ''emboldening'' India.

''Unfortunately, the leading powers not only did not seriously engage India to prevent her from building arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, but even helped India in the effort by transferring sensitive technology in one form or another,'' Leghari said.

Given the disappointment in Pakistan to what it perceives to have been the West's apathy toward India, analysts there say it appears unlikely that Islamabad will heed pleas from several countries, including the US, to show restraint.

UNI

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