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Peaceniks denounce Indian belligerence

A peace group today advised Pakistan against responding in kind to India's recently declared nuclear doctrine.

In a statement published today, the national council of the Pakistan Peace Coalition said the Indian doctrine was ''calculated to cause a constantly accelerating arms race in Asia by its aggressive, indeed provocative, language and content.''

This ''bellicose programme of unending military build-up in all conceivable fields'' needed to be rejected ''firmly and purposefully,'' the statement said.

Though the doctrine, propounded by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led interim government ahead of India's general election, talked of a minimal deterrence, the conditions attached to it made it a maximal programme, it said.

Since the doctrine wants the programme to be ''effective, enduring, diverse and flexible,'' the group said ''the Indian nuclear forces are to be a triad of land-based missiles, aircraft as well as ship-based weapons with supporting facilities in space.''

''It seems to make one pleasing sound: India will not be the first to use the nukes. But then goes on to talk menacingly of punitive retaliation that will inflict damage on the aggressor that will be unacceptable to it, '' the statement said.

''Let Islamabad not rush in reaction to propound a Pakistani nuclear doctrine that will be much the same in content as the Indian one except for the provision of first strike right,'' the group advised.

It appealed to ''sane people'' in India ''to undo the mischief of their rightist warmongers and join us in the great enterprise of keeping South Asia free of all mass destruction weapons'' and added, ''we reject the notion that having been invented and fabricated, nothing can prevent the deployment of nuclear weapons. So were the killer gases.''

UNI

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