India Plans Nuke Buildup

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NEW DELHI: Youre elected to lead a fragile minority coalition government, expecting your tenure will be nasty, brutish and short. What to do? Go nuclear, of course. Hindu nationalist Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in today as prime minister and restated his election promise to exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons into Indias arsenal.

Indias arch-foe, neighboring Pakistan, immediately warned that it would match any Indian escalation. Both countries are believed to have the capacity to build nuclear weapons, says TIME New Delhi bureau chief Tim McGirk, but Vajpayee is now saying India should proceed with building warheads for its missiles.

The improbable upsurge of Indian nuclear threats is more about domestic political grandstanding than the state of relations with Pakistan, says McGirk, and theyre not likely to risk international condemnation by taking this path for at least the next few years. Which is cause for relief, since few analysts believe Vajpayees government will last that long.