By Kenneth J. Cooper
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 1998; Page A26

NEW DELHI, May 27—India today revised its blanket declaration that it would not use nuclear weapons first in any conflict and offered instead to negotiate bilateral agreements on the matter with regional arch-rival Pakistan and other countries.

The shift in India's developing nuclear doctrine was put forth in a policy paper that the coalition government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee submitted to Parliament today as lawmakers began two days of debate on the nation's recent nuclear tests and the government's announced plans to assemble a nuclear arsenal.

Vajpayee opened the debate by reasserting that India stands as the world's sixth declared nuclear power and dismissing observations by State Department officials and other critics that the nation does not fit the definition of a nuclear state under the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"India is now a nuclear weapon state; this is the reality that cannot be denied," the prime minister said. "It is not a conferment that we seek, nor is it a status for others to grant. . . . It is India's due, the right of one-sixth of humankind."

In its 10-page policy statement, Vajpayee's government said that in 1994 India had proposed a treaty with Pakistan barring a nuclear first strike. At that time, the two nations each knew the other had the capacity to build nuclear weapons.

"The government on this occasion reiterates its readiness to discuss a 'no-first-use' agreement with that country, as also with other countries bilaterally, or in a collective forum," the government said.

The policy shift appeared to be a bid to engage other countries in negotiations to demonstrate that India has acquired more international importance as a declared nuclear power. The same purpose appears to have been behind an earlier offer to negotiate a formal moratorium on further nuclear tests. India has refused to sign the global Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which virtually precludes any amendments.

Mohan Guruswamy, a national security adviser to Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said that the latest offer was specifically intended to "allay Pakistani insecurity" and rebuild bilateral confidence that was shattered by the tests and provocative statements by Indian cabinet members that followed. India and Pakistan already have an agreement, reached in the late 1980s, not to launch a military strike against each other's nuclear facilities, Guruswamy said.

To soothe another angered neighbor, China, Vajpayee's speech and the policy paper dropped an earlier assertion that India's underground tests of May 11 and 13 were conducted because China represented a security threat.

Vajpayee offered that reasoning in a letter to President Clinton on May 12. The comment provoked an outpouring of criticism from Beijing, which has enjoyed improving relations with New Delhi over the last decade. Vajpayee's top aide, Brajesh Mishra, made the first move to ease tensions last week by saying India wants "very good relations" with China.

Opposition members of Parliament accused the government of clumsy diplomacy with China, Pakistan, the United States and European nations in the aftermath of the nuclear tests. "You have invented the security threat of China, and the security environment has deteriorated because of this," said the Congress Party's Natwar Singh, a former foreign minister. "I'm glad in your wisdom you have pulled back from the brink, but the damage has been already inflicted on India's relations with China, Pakistan and . . . the United States and European Union."

Indrajit Gupta, a senior legislator with the Indian Communist Party, which tilts toward China, questioned the government's broader premise that nuclear weaponry would ensure national security. "Is it essential for our security that we should go into production of nuclear weapons?" Gupta said. "These are such weapons that cannot be used."

Senior BJP leaders watching the debate on television in the prime minister's office gleefully applauded opposition criticisms of the widely popular nuclear tests, saying they served to boost the BJP's prospects in three parliamentary district elections next month. Vajpayee, who leads a 14-party coalition, has denied that there were any partisan motives behind the nuclear testing.