India and Pakistan to have nuclear hotline

In a major step towards reducing the risk of nuclear war on the world's most dangerous faultline, India and Pakistan agreed yesterday to set up a hotline to warn each other of any incident that could be mistaken for an attack.

In a major step towards reducing the risk of nuclear war on the world's most dangerous faultline, India and Pakistan agreed yesterday to set up a hotline to warn each other of any incident that could be mistaken for an attack.

At talks in Delhi, the two countries also agreed to renew a joint ban on any further nuclear tests, except in the case of "extraordinary events". Until now, the border between India and Pakistan has been the scene of the most dangerous nuclear confrontation in the world. The Dr Strangelove scenario, in which an unauthorised or accidental firing of a missile starts a nuclear war, has been a real danger.

Until yesterday's agreement there was no hotline between the Indian and Pakistani governments of the sort set up between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The only hotline between Pakistan and India was between the senior commands of the two countries' militaries. It is believed to have been used several times to calm the atmosphere after violence at the border, and will be "upgraded, dedicated and secured" under yesterday's agreement.

But there was no secure way for the two countries' political leaders, who could have overruled the military, to communicate if one feared it was under attack. The new direct, secure telephone link will connect top officials in the foreign ministries.

While the delegates from the two foreign ministries were meeting in Delhi to discuss the delicate details of avoiding nuclear armageddon, pop musicians from both countries were holding a joint concert for peace.

The talks were the most solid evidence yet that India's new Congress-led government is serious about continuing the peace talks with Pakistan initiated under the former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

"The spirit right now in the nuclear realm is to transcend beyond rhetoric and do something substantive and concrete," Masood Khan, a senior official in the Pakistani delegation, told reporters, adding that "significant progress" had been made.

Two years ago, when India and Pakistan appeared to be on the brink of war, a million troops were massing at the border and foreign expats were fleeing Delhi and Islamabad, fearing the onset of the world's first nuclear war. In 2002, after India accused Pakistan of being behind a militant attack on the parliament building in Delhi in December 2001, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Mr Vajpayee engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship, with Mr Musharraf threatening to use any means at his disposal to protect Pakistan.

But the two men initiated peace talks last year. Mr Vajpayee lost last month's Indian elections, but there is no popular opposition to the rapprochement with Pakistan that has made war seem a less likely prospect now than in 2002.

The two sides publicly announced their nuclear capabilities by staging nuclear tests in 1998. Since then they have agreed to a joint test ban, which they renewed yesterday.

India has committed itself to no-first-use of nuclear weapons; Pakistan, which has fewer conventional arms, has not.There is also a fear that Islamic militants might get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - another reason to have a hotline.