Global Policy Forum

By Judith Miller And James Risen

Behind President Clinton's blunt warning last spring that South Asia was the world's most perilous region lay an assessment from American intelligence agencies that the likelihood of a war between India and Pakistan that could erupt into a nuclear conflict had increased significantly, according to officials with access to the secret intelligence.

The officials said that the Central Intelligence Agency and the nation's other intelligence organizations had reached their consensus after examining the nuclear capacities of both countries and the growing tensions between them, in particular over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, began late last summer after Pakistan-backed militants crossed over the high mountain peaks of Kashmir into the Indian-controlled area of Kargil, setting off weeks of heavy fighting that included airstrikes.

At that time, the administration grew fearful that the conflict could escalate into a nuclear exchange, officials said, citing both states' relatively poor intelligence about each other's intentions and movements and their lack of direct communications. "The Kargil episode really got everyone's attention," said George Perkovich, deputy director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation and the author of "India's Nuclear Bomb," published last year by the University of California.

Several analysts who took part in drafting the assessment said the report had succeeded in underscoring the importance of working to ease political tensions between two rivals that have fought three wars in the 50 years since their independence. In the past, the administration had focused mainly on trying to stop the development and spread of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent.

Last week, for instance, President Clinton talked by telephone with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India, who is due on a state visit next month, said Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser. Mr. Berger added that he himself talks with Pakistan's military leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as part of the dialogue with Islamabad. President Clinton received the intelligence assessment shortly before his first visit to South Asia in March. And he clearly reflected the report's conclusions when he twice called the Indian subcontinent "the most dangerous place in the world." India's president scolded Mr. Clinton and called the description "alarmist."

After the Kargil episode, the assessment, which remains secret, concluded that there was a sharply increased chance of a nonnuclear military conflict between India and Pakistan, possibly erupting into a nuclear exchange. The chances of such a nonnuclear conflict, one White House official said, were put in the "50-50 range." "The likelihood of a nuclear conflict goes up and down," said another official. "It's less important to assign a probability to it than to warn senior officials that there is a serious threat here that demands immediate and focused attention and action."

The assessment contained no specific guidance on what the administration could do to reduce tensions, according to those familiar with the document. But Mr. Clinton and other top officials have urged senior Indian and Pakistani officials in public and private meetings to open a direct political dialogue and give up their nuclear programs, warning them of the growing peril of an accidental or deliberate nuclear exchange.

While administration officials agreed that Mr. Clinton's visit helped ease some tensions, neither country has signaled that it intends to halt development of the arsenals the two countries revealed to the world by exploding nuclear devices in quick succession in 1998.

India continues to see its nuclear arsenal as necessary for its status as an emerging power and to deter not only Pakistan but also neighboring China, a Pakistani ally. Pakistan, less populous and poorer than India, sees its nuclear force as essential to counterbalance its rival's larger conventional forces.

Additionally, analysts have warned that if American plans for a missile defense prompt China to build up its nuclear arsenal, still more momentum will be added to the arms race across the region. While the president's visit has not prompted New Delhi or Islamabad to scale back its nuclear program, many experts say the trip and subsequent administration diplomacy have helped to nurture other positive political developments.

India has released some political prisoners related to Pakistani-backed militant groups in Kashmir, and last month one of the most important of those groups, the Hizbul Mujahedeen, declared a unilateral three-month cease-fire. The group opened talks with India on Friday. But diplomats and other experts still see the chances of a lasting breakthrough as low, and violence has continued in Kashmir.

Given the Kashmir dispute, diplomats and arms control experts see nuclear weapons on the subcontinent as particularly dangerous. India and Pakistan, unlike other nuclear powers -- for example, the United States and Russia -- share a common border, have had no sustained dialogue and lack even a framework to hold serious negotiations.

After Pakistan moved into Kargil, Pakistan's rhetoric grew increasingly harsh and India prepared to mobilize a significant force that could have led to a dramatic escalation, experts say. "Kargil proved that having nuclear weapons would not deter new conflicts," Mr. Perkovich said. "It also showed that unless such conflicts themselves were prevented, the possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear exchange would also increase given both states' relatively poor systems of intelligence surveillance and nuclear command and control."

While neither private experts nor the American government has firm estimates of the size of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear arsenals, Mr. Perkovich estimates that India has produced enough plutonium for 60 weapons.

But he said he believed that India had far fewer actual bombs, "in the neighborhood of 35 weapons." In the event of a nuclear war, these would be delivered by aircraft. Pakistan has enough highly enriched uranium for roughly the same number of bombs, he added, and it could deliver them by a combination of bombers and missiles.

Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asian policy scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, called the risk of nuclear conflict "serious" and "increasing." But the president's trip, he said, had succeeded in engaging Washington in the region, a development that was particularly important to India, which has long desired to be seen as an Asian power. "The president should have gone much earlier," he said.

Robert Oakley, a former ambassador to Pakistan, said that Washington may have inadvertently helped fuel Pakistan's nuclear ambitions and reduced American leverage over Islamabad by failing to resume economic and military assistance to Pakistan that Congress cut off in 1990 because of the Pakistani nuclear program.

Experts and diplomats said President Clinton had been determined to visit India after Mrs. Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, toured the country in 1995, and when he finally went, in March, the trip was billed as a "war prevention trip," according to one participant in the intelligence assessment, which was begun with the two-month Kargil conflict that ended the previous July.

"Since the intelligence report concluded that the region demanded high-level attention to defuse tensions and prevent the outbreak of conflicts that could escalate, the politics of the trip dovetailed perfectly with the intelligence assessment," he said.

During his visit, in an address to the Indian Parliament, Mr. Clinton appealed to the "great nation of India" to give up its nuclear arsenal, and he urged India to take the lead in starting a dialogue with Pakistan. Progress toward such a dialogue seemed to be building with a meeting of the two countries' prime ministers on their border in early 1999. But after the Kargil incursion, which came just months later, India's leadership felt betrayed.

Since Kargil, Pakistan's civilian government was overthrown in a military coup last October. Mr. Clinton met briefly with the leader, General Musharraf, after his much longer visit to India, but made no headway on a range of American concerns, including when Pakistan would return to democratic government.

Pakistan continues to maintain that it will not scale back its nuclear program unless India does so first. While India has said that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict in the region, it has made clear it will respond if attacked. Indian officials brushed aside efforts by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to persuade them to join international talks aimed at ending the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. And Prime Minister Vajpayee has steadfastly refused to renounce the country's nuclear arsenal, though he has pledged not to conduct further nuclear tests.