Little Leverage for Swaying India

President Clinton on Tuesday led an avalanche of global condemnation of India’s three nuclear underground tests, but administration officials and arms control specialists acknowledged that the international community probably does not have enough leverage to force New Delhi to stop developing nuclear weapons any time soon.

Still, experts insisted that swift, decisive action against India was vital to prevent the destruction of the web of treaties and commitments that has helped contain the spread of nuclear weapons and make the world a safer place over the past three decades.

Initially, at least, both presidential and congressional rhetoric has been strong, with Clinton indicating he was prepared to impose economic sanctions on India.

“This action by India not only threatens the stability of the region, it directly challenges the firm international consensus to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” the president said Tuesday before departing for Europe and the annual summit of leading industrial nations.

Stressing that the United States “strongly opposes any new nuclear testing,” he noted that “our laws have very stringent [sanctions] . . . in response to nuclear tests by nonnuclear weapons states, and I intend to implement them fully.”

White House officials said Clinton had recalled Richard F. Celeste, U.S. ambassador to India, for consultations. The president also was said to be reassessing his own visit to India, scheduled for later this year.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a Senate resolution Tuesday evening demanding immediate imposition of economic sanctions against India, while the Senate subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs scheduled hearings today on Monday’s tests.

But Clinton administration officials, clearly stunned by India’s action, reacted with statements that had a certain deer-in-the-headlights quality to them.

“We are expecting to take legal steps [against India under terms of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994], but since it’s the first time we’ve implemented this law, we have to look very carefully at what the law requires and permits,” said one White House official. “We’ll be making recommendations to the president soon.”

State Department officials said urgent consultations already had been launched with key allies and that some form of joint action against New Delhi could come this weekend when leaders of the Group of 7 nations--the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy--and Russia meet as the Group of 8 in Birmingham, England, for their annual summit.

Canada, which recalled its senior representative in India on Tuesday, and Japan, the only country to have suffered an atomic attack, both used strong language to condemn India’s move. Moscow, which has long enjoyed warm relations with India, used the word “disappointment” to characterize its reaction.

There is little doubt that sanctions imposed by a solid front of Western countries would hurt India’s struggling economy. While U.S. aid to India totaled only $92 million last year, U.S. companies doing business in India have nearly $600 million in project finance awaiting approval through the U.S. Export-Import Bank. India also ranked as the third-largest recipient of World Bank loans; it received $1.5 billion last year and is due for an additional $3 billion this year.

Restrictions on dealings with banks or other financial institutions in the Group of 8 countries also would have a serious impact.

But summing up the dilemma facing major nations in responding to the Indian tests, Richard Haass, former White House official and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, said of sanctions: “OK, so you’ve made your point--what then? Do you really want to block IMF [International Monetary Fund] loans if India catches the Asian [economic] flu? Do you want to increase India’s instability when it has nuclear weapons?”

Yes, answer those who specialize in nuclear arms control. They agree that swift action by as many industrialized nations as possible to impose stiff international sanctions against India might not deter it from its nuclear course. But they also insist that the message such action sends is probably the only way to discourage other nations from quickly following a similar course.

Joseph Cirincione, a respected arms control specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, painted a nightmare scenario in which Pakistan explodes its own device, an alarmed China begins to upgrade its own sizable arsenal, and very quickly the two key global treaties aimed at checking the spread of nuclear weapons--the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty--begin to unravel.

“I have talked with diplomats today who are terrified at what might be happening here,” Cirincione said. “India’s explosions have blown a hole in the entire global regime for controlling nuclear weapons. . . . For experts here, this is a profoundly frightening moment.”

Times staff writers Richard C. Paddock in Moscow and Doyle McManus and Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Punishments India Faces

The Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994 requires the president to impose sanctions against any nation that conducts a nuclear test. Under the law, the president can delay sanctions for a time--in this case until about June 20--but cannot refuse to impose them.

The sanctions include:

* Aid: All aid except for humanitarian assistance, food, and agricultural commodities will be terminated.

* Defense: All sales of defense items, munitions, or construction services, and all licenses to buy defense items are suspended.

* Financing: All foreign military financing is terminated.

* Credit: All credit or credit guarantees except for humanitarian assistance or intelligence activities are cut off.

* Loans: U.S. opposes all loans or extensions of credit from any international financial institution, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

* Banks: U. S. banks are prohibited from making any loan or providing any credit to the government except for food or certain agricultural commodities.

Note: Under the law, the five delcared nuclear powers--the United State, Russia, France, Britain and China--cannot be sanctioned.

Sources: The World Bank, UPI