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No arms embargo on India and Pakistan, says U.K.

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON MAY 26. The British Government today sought to scotch speculation that it was planning an arms embargo on India and Pakistan in view of the military build-up in the region, but said it was watching the situation "very closely''.

A spokesman of the Department of Trade and Industry, which deals with arms exports, told The Hindu that there were "no current plans for an arms embargo'', although the department was keeping a close watch on the developments on the subcontinent.

He dismissed a front-page report in The Independent on Sunday that the sale of 60 Hawk jets, worth one billion pounds, to India had been put on hold as part of a ban on all arms export licences to India and Pakistan.

The report was also shrugged off by Indian diplomatic sources who said they were not aware of any such move.

The newspaper, however, claimed that the " ban'' affecting £64 million worth of arms exports to India and £6 million in the case of Pakistan was signed by the Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, on Thursday. The ban, it said, might be extended to "dual use'' goods such as Land Rovers. ``The decision underlines the extreme anxiety felt in London and other capitals at the most serious threat of a nuclear exchange since the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s,'' it said as commentators talked up the threat of a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan citing Saturday's missile test by Islamabad as yet another sign of the growing "summer madness'' in the region.

Unnamed Western officials and "experts'' are said to be "exasperated'' that neither the leadership in the two countries nor the people appear to be aware of the "true'' dangers of a nuclear exchange.

"The impression on the subcontinent is that nuclear bombs are just bigger bombs than other ones. There is no realisation that use of nuclear weapons would take them across a new threshold,'' The Sunday Telegraph quoted a Western official as saying to explain the "gung-ho, pro-nuclear'' mood in India and Pakistan.

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has described the situation as extremely "grave'' and is reported to be heavily engaged in bringing diplomatic pressure on the two countries to pull back from the brink. He is sending the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to Islamabad and New Delhi this week, but expectations from his visit are modest, to put it mildly.

Observers said that while he would be received "politely'' his capacity to influence thinking in the two capitals was limited.

They attached more significance to the visit of the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, pointing out that Americans alone were capable of achieving a breakthrough. "Just being courted by (President) Bush and the big boys could be enough to sooth Indian egos.

At the end of the day that is what a lot of this is about: egos and men with nuclear weapons,'' The Observer quoted a western diplomat as saying.

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