By conducting three underground nuclear tests simultaneously, India was formally joined the club of five nuclear weapon states. India may now announce that it will be joining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Thereby wearing all further options to conduct tests. The Indian behaviour confirms that it is a reluctant nuclear weapon state compelled to join the nuclear club because all its pleas to move towards nuclear disarmament were ignored by the nuclear weapon powers and they got the nuclear weapons legitimised by the international community through the unconditional and indefinite extension of the Non-Pro-liferation Treaty. The recent Ghauri missile test by Pakistan, the ongoing nuclear and missile technology cooperation between the two neighbours of India-China and Pakistan-and the inability of the international regimes to enforce the nonproliferation obligations on the nuclear weapon powers made in inevitable for India to join the nuclear weapon club. India should immediately declare a no-first use policy and invite China, Russia and Pakistan to join in a joint no-first use declaration.

India by conducting a thermonuclear test, a fission test and a low-yield test has established that it is in a position to make warheads with yields ranging from a few kilotons to megatons. The capability of our scientists to fabricate these warheads was never in doubt. But those interested in sowing doubts about the Indian technological capabilities carried on a virulent campaign that India

was in no position to fabricate such sophisticated warheads. With this one test, India has become a complete nuclear weapon power by conducting only four tests. The Chinese have till now conducted 45 tests, the US 1,200 Russia 700, etc etc.

This test formalises the situation obtaining in this region since early '9Os when India had to get ready its deterrent after Pakistan became a nuclear weapon state in 1987 with active Chinese assistance and tacit US connivance. Pakistani prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif General Aslam Beg and Dr A Q Khan have confirmed their possession of nuclear weapons amidst reports that the Pakistani weapon was not only of Chinese design but was tested in Lopnor in the

mid-eighties. If Pakistan wants to conduct its own test let it do so. That should cause no undue concern in India. The world has to recognise now there are eight nuclear weapon states and that the world is no more unsafe than the one with five nuclear weapon powers who have been the most war prone in history.

Now India will get an effective say in nuclear disarmament. India should initiate a series of measures to promote confidence building and steer the world towards disarmament. It should call for an Asian summit among China, Russia, Pakistan and India to discuss no-first use and to devise measures to advance towards nuclear disarmament.

In carrying out these tests India has broken no commitments to any international treaty it has accepted. If in spite of India offering to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty any sanctions are imposed then they cannot be sustained long. President Clinton is scheduled to visit China next month. This test should remind both the US and China that the Chinese proliferation activity is of utmost concern to India.

Good sense should now prevail. With this test and a possible Pakistani test, if the other nuclear powers should accept India, Israel and Pakistan as nuclear weapon states.

That should put an end to the controversies and the debate about the NPT. With these three tests, India has become an irreversible nuclear weapon state and the other nuclear powers have to reconcile themselves to it.

It is also relevant to recall at this stage what the Nixon administration said when Dr Kissinger made his secret trip to China in 1971. They justified it on the ground that a nation of 800 million armed with nuclear weapons could not be ignored. Whatever be the immediate short-term responses' in the long run India will be treated with respect. India should also make it clear that it will sign the CTBT only if there are no sanctions.

By - K. Subrahmanyam