NEW DELHI, Oct 12 (IPS) - How is North Korea’s atomic explosion, signifying the latest breakout from the global nuclear restraint regime, likely to affect the preceding two breakout cases, India and Pakistan?

Eight years after the two South Asian states blasted their way into the world’s ’nuclear club’, it seems probable that their full integration and “normalisation” as its members will meet with more resistance than it did before North Korea’s Oct. 9 nuclear test.

India and Pakistan are also likely to trade some hostile rhetoric over Islamabad’s past role in nuclear proliferation to North Korea. This is the South Asian sideshow to the main post- October 9 global drama, which has so far seen all seven self-proclaimed nuclear weapons- states (NWSs) of the world barring North Korea strongly condemn its test explosion.

New Delhi was quick to respond to North Korea’s blast by describing it as “unfortunate”, and violative of that country’s “international commitments, [and] jeopardising peace, stability and security on the Korean peninsula and in the region.” It also said that the test “highlights the dangers of clandestine proliferation.”

This was widely seen, and energetically publicised in the media, as referring to Pakistan, which had secret dealings with North Korea going back to the 1980s. The Pakistan-based shady A.Q. Khan network is believed to have sold uranium enrichment technology and centrifuges to North Korea in return for its “Nodong” series of ballistic missiles.

President Gen.Pervez Musharraf in his recently released memoir, ’In the Line of Fire’, writes: “Dr Khan transferred nearly two dozen P-1 and P-11 centrifuges to North Korea. He also provided North Korea with a flow meter, some special oils for centrifuges, and coaching on centrifuge technology...”

Many Indian commentators harp on this admission. “They want to use this as a stick to beat Pakistan with,” says Kamal Mitra Chenoy of the School of International Studies at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University here.

“Some stridently demand that the United States should insist that Khan be subjected to interrogation and a full inquiry into the whole issue. But this is a childish attitude, which exaggerates the degree of Pakistani involvement in North Korea and tries to settle regional scores which are largely extraneous to the Korean nuclear issue,” Chenoy added."

The Khan network did supply uranium enrichment technology to North Korea. But the material used in the test is believed to be plutonium, extracted by North Korea from a small research reactor built by the former Soviet Union in 1965. So the Indian demand for an external inquiry into Khan’s activities is unlikely to cut much ice.

Besides, the U.S. will be extremely reluctant to mount pressure on Musharraf when it badly needs his help in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border areas. In the past, Pakistan has rejected outright all demands for Khan’s interrogation. He is currently under house arrest.

Pakistan’s argument that its government had nothing to do with Khan’s “autonomous” operations does not sound credible.

In Pakistan, sensitive nuclear designs and materials, including heavy equipment such as 6 feet-tall metal cylinders, could not have been carried out of the Khan Laboratories premises to an airport and then by a military plane to Pyongyang without the government’s knowledge or complicity. At least 18 tonnes of material was reportedly transported during the 1990s.

The U.S. was aware of Khan’s activities, but chose to ignore its own intelligence, especially after September 11, 2001. It is likely to do the same today.

However, if Pakistan’s case that it had no role in North Korea’s nuclear programme is weak, India’s charges against Pyongyang also lack credibility. New Delhi self-righteously claims that its own 1998 tests breached no international obligations: it has never signed the NPT.

North Korea too did not violate any “international commitments”. It walked out of the NPT in 2003, in keeping with its Article X. India’s 1998 tests could be legitimately considered to have jeopardised “peace, stability and security” in South Asia, just as the Korean test did in Northeast Asia.

The plain truth is that both India and Pakistan are behaving like the older NWSs, and imitating their double standards and hypocrisy: non-members of the nuclear club must practise abstinence, but the members keep their weapons because they are “responsible”.

Yet, the two arrivistes are second or third-class members of the Club, not in its top league. They, especially Pakistan, may come under pressure to demonstrate that they have taken specific strong measures to prevent the spread of nuclear or missile technology.

India will certainly find the going has got tough for Congressional approval of the nuclear deal signed with the U.S. in July last year.

“The Korean test is a setback for the process of its ratification, which already faces hurdles”, argues M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs researcher, attached to Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore. “October 9 delivered a seismic shock to U.S. policy-makers, and that’s likely to stiffen the opposition to the deal. It seems almost certain that it won’t be passed in the ’lame duck’ session of Congress, which meets in November.”

If ratification is delayed to next year, the entire lengthy process of legislation will have to be gone through all over again in the new Congress. The longer the delay, the higher the chances that the deal will lose momentum and new obstacles will arise.

A Bill which enables the deal’s implementation is stuck in the Senate (although the House has passed a similar resolution). Many Senators have hedged the Bill in with conditions that restrict the scope of U.S.-India civilian nuclear cooperation, or demand guarantees that India is exercising nuclear restraint, including in fissile material production.

New Delhi has found some of these unacceptable or excessively restrictive of its sovereignty. “The conditions could become tighter in the weeks to come because of the anxiety North Korea’s test has provoked,” says Ramana. “Next year, another ball-game starts, although there are no principled objections to the deal, and a lot of backing for it.”

After the Korean test, U.S. non-proliferation experts have become more assertive. They call for a less permissive, stricter approach to overlooking breaches of nuclear restraint norms.

Similarly, the Democrats, now in the ascendant, will resist granting an easy victory to President Bush as his ratings plummet.

Finally, there’s growing fear that yet more countries, in particular Iran and South Korea, could draw negative lessons from the India-U.S. case and consider going nuclear.

“This could mean yet more amendments to Congressional Bills, and greater delays,” says Ramana. “India will now find it hard to demand that nuclear supplies to it should continue even if it conducts a test.”

This is bad news for the India-U.S. deal, but probably good news for the cause of nuclear restraint, arms reduction and disarmament.