Vajpayee will visit Pokhran on May 20

Mahajan announced that Vajpayee called up British Prime Minister Tony Blair last evening at 7.30, to inform him in his capacity as Chairman of the current G-8 summit about India’s reasons to go nuclear. The conversation lasted 10-12 minutes, Mahajan said.

Interestingly, he seemed to distance himself from planned "jingoistic celebrations" by BJP workers, such as carrying pots of Pokhran sand across the country in "yatras", saying the BJP "does not want to derive any political mileage from this". He pointed out that Vajpayee himself, quoting Krishna in the Gita, had said "Main nimitya hoon (I am only an instrument)", and that the realcongratulations must be given to the scientists who designed and executed the tests so perfectly.

Nevertheless, Mahajan added, the BJP could not prevent people or political parties from "celebrating a moment of national pride".

The telephone call to Blair comes in response to the gradual easing of criticism by Britain, which yesterday went public about the fact that the G-8 was unlikely to concertedly impose economic sanctions against India.

This stand has, significantly, been taken after France and Russia openly stood by India in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear tests. The reason for the climb-down, sources said, is that Britain did not want the G-8 summit to be split apart by a controversy over India, and simultaneously sought to retain its enormous economic interests here (Britain is India’s second largest trading partner.)

Meanwhile, New Delhi today changed political tack in its diplomatic offensive, offering to restore old, meaningful relationships with world powers, but emphasising that itwas doing so in its new avatar as a nuclear weapons state.

"A nuclear power state is a state of being. Whoever possesses nuclear weapons is a nuclear power," Mahajan said. "It’s not up to the people to decide who is a nuclear power and who isn’t," he added. "We are not a country which needs a certificate from others. Whether anyone believes it or not, India is a nuclear weapons power.”

But, he pointed out, the fact that India was now a nuclear weapons state did not mean that the US and India could not be good friends again. “The (testing) does not cast any aspersions on our relations with the US. I don’t think it is fractured by any sanctions. I don’t even think there are any tensions. We can appreciate (US President Bill) Clinton’s concerns. The US has its own laws and we have our own security perceptions. They are applying their laws on US citizens and companies. We appreciate their problems, but it doesn’t mean that our relations will deteriorate,” he said.

Government sources said New Delhi’sstrategy would now be to appear to be reasonable in any nuclear debate with the world powers, but not yield on substance. Mahajan seemed to have fired the first salvo in that regard.

He also reiterated the Prime Minister’s view that India would not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since these were discriminatory in nature. Meanwhile, envoys of Scandinavian nations in the capital yesterday made a demarche to Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath, conveying the “utmost dismay” of the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden over India’s tests.

“The Nordic countries consider the repeated Indian nuclear testing in clear defiance of international norms and the strong reactions of the international community as a serious blow to regional security ,” they said.