By Kenneth J. Cooper
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 16, 1998; Page A01

NEW DELHI, May 15—Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared India today to be a nuclear power capable of making a "big bomb" that would not be used for a first strike but would be delivered, if necessary, to defend the nation.

Vajpayee's comments, coming on the heels of five Indian nuclear tests this week, represent the first public assertion by an Indian government that the world's second most populous country plans to develop nuclear weapons for military or strategic purposes.

Since India's first nuclear test in 1974, successive governments have maintained that the nation's nuclear program was for peaceful purposes; U.S. and allied intelligence agencies, however, have long doubted this assertion. Today, in a speech to political supporters and then in an interview with India's leading newsmagazine, Vajpayee declared, "India is now a nuclear weapons state." A Vajpayee adviser said separately that the government is studying the development of a command and control system for nuclear weapons and a doctrine for their use.

"We have the capacity for a big bomb now. Ours will never be weapons of aggression," Vajpayee told India Today magazine, according to transcripts released by his office.

The prime minister's office initially released a transcript that quoted him as saying, "We have a big bomb now for which the necessary command and control system is also in place."

Later, Vajpayee's office provided a revised transcript that had him saying only that "we have the capacity for a big bomb now," deleting the reference to the oversight system. India Today revised its own copy in accord with the government's new version and refused public comment, the Associated Press reported.

What Vajpayee's revised statement that India has "the capacity for a big bomb" meant is cloudy. In announcing Monday's nuclear tests, he said a thermonuclear device, or hydrogen bomb, had been detonated, but the actual size and sophistication of the devices tested are unknown.

In a brief, sober speech to supporters outside his official residence, Vajpayee vowed: "We will not use these weapons against anybody. But to defend ourselves, if the need arises, we will not hesitate."

India borders a declared nuclear power, China, and an undeclared one, Pakistan, against which India has fought and won three wars. China defeated India in a 1962 border war that lasted a month.

Vajpayee's declaration amounted to a demand that the international community recognize the nation as a nuclear power, joining the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain.

Under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- which India has not signed -- those five countries are allowed to keep their nuclear weapons and are not subject to the same international inspections of their facilities as other states.

Since its inception in 1948, India's nuclear program has been under the civilian control of government scientists and senior bureaucrats. A national security adviser to Vajpayee's political party said that a new command and control system to oversee nuclear weapons would be created separately from existing military services.

The adviser, Mohan Guruswamy, said India's nuclear doctrine would be developed during the next few months as part of a national security review being directed by former defense minister K.C. Pant.

A senior Vajpayee aide, Pramod Mahajan, said civilian control over nuclear arms would be maintained.

Vajpayee described India's decision to resume nuclear testing, which brought international condemnation, as motivated by a need to ensure the nation's "security and self-defense" and to update its nuclear technology.

"We live in a world where India is surrounded by nuclear weaponry," Vajpayee said in the magazine interview. "The world community should appreciate the fact that India, the second most populous country on Earth, waited for five decades [since independence] before taking this step."

In his speech, Vajpayee said: "In the last few years, our security environment on all our four sides has deteriorated. New weapons are being made. Old ones are being modernized. In this region, weapons are being brought from outside," an apparent reference to the reported supply of missile technology to Pakistan by China and North Korea.

The underground explosions at the desert testing site about 330 miles southwest of New Delhi near the Pakistani border also were "done just to see that what you did in the lab will take shape on the ground or not," he said.

The tests were resoundingly popular among Indians, but Vajpayee, who heads a 14-party coalition government that controls a narrow parliamentary majority, denied that the tests were conducted to boost the popularity of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP, which won the most seats in this year's parliamentary elections, has long espoused adding nuclear weapons to India's arsenal.

Taken together, Vajpayee's separate sets of remarks sent mixed signals to the eight nations, including the United States, Japan and Germany, that have announced sanctions on India for flouting international efforts toward nonproliferation.

Vajpayee urged other nations to "rethink and reconsider" the suspension of various forms of aid to India, one of the world's poorest countries. He called sanctions "hypocritical" and vowed that India would withstand their impact.

Some countries that have imposed sanctions, he said, have conducted "far more nuclear tests . . . built huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and delivery systems" or have been "enjoying the shade provided by somebody else's nuclear umbrella."

"Sanctions cannot and will not hurt us," he continued. "India will not be cowed down by any such steps and punitive steps. India has the sanction of her own past glory and future vision to become strong -- in every sense of the term."