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By ERIC TALMADGE ^Associated Press Writer BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) - Closing their annual summit, leaders of the world's richest nations appealed Sunday to Pakistan not to respond to India's nuclear explosions even as the Pakistanis indicated they would go ahead with testing. President Clinton said India's nuclear explosions risked drawing Pakistan, China and Russia into an escalating conflict, a course he undiplomatically described as ''nutty.'' British Prime Minister Tony Blair, host of this year's gathering, expressed a ''sense of frustration'' over the India-Pakistan nuclear standoff. Blair, who opposed a summit declaration of sanctions against India, said the decision that ''individual countries will have their own individual responses'' to India's nuclear tests was the right thing to do. He called on India to join a global nuclear ban, saying its actions ''gravely weakened the security of the world.'' ''It is important that they realize the huge international concern that having done these tests now, particularly with what we're hearing in terms of what Pakistan may do, it is essential that they come within the comprehensive treaty process,'' Blair said. In a final communique, the eight leaders sought to set a broader tone than the India-Pakistan conflict that has dominated their three-day meeting. They said the challenge they faced was to ensure that the benefits of greater trade flows and closer connections between nations would ''improve the quality of life of people everywhere.'' The Group of Eight had condemned the Indian blasts and expressed ''grave concern'' in a special statement that they repeated in their final communique. But because of reluctance by Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, they failed to endorse sanctions, as urged by the United States, Japan and Canada. Pakistan called their effort a ''weak response'' and in Islamabad Sunday, Pakistan Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub told The Associated Press, ''It is a matter of when, not if, Pakistan will test ... the decision has already been taken by the Cabinet.'' In a sign of how jittery the powerful nations have become, unconfirmed rumors that Pakistan may have conducted a nuclear test drew responses from some leaders; Pakistan quickly said the rumors were not true. In a broadcast interview, Clinton spoke of concerns beyond India's actions. ''The answer is not for India to become a nuclear power, and then for Pakistan to match it stride for stride, and then for China to be brought in to support the Pakistanis and move troops to the Indian border, and for Russia to come in and to recreate in a different context the conflicts of the cold war,'' Clinton said. ''It is a nutty way to go. It is not the way to chart the future.'' Clinton's interview was taped before word of Pakistan's intention to conduct its own nuclear tests. Clinton also met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, their first meeting since last year's summit in Denver. Blair, at his closing news conference, said Yeltsin's pressence was ''immensely valuable. ... Without the voice of Russia being heard in the G-8 councils, it is far more difficult for us to deal with the serious international issues that confront us.'' The Birmingham summit was renamed the Group of Eight to reflect the fact Russia's full participation for the first time. In their final 10-page communique, released after a closing session, the summit leaders stressed that rich nations must work to ensure that global prosperity is widely shared. They pledged increased efforts to boost health care and education programs in Third World countries and open their markets further to imports from developing nations. The document stressed the need to make sure the fruits of globalization were more widely shared by all income groups in their own countries. On Indonesia, another global hot spot that cast a shadow on the Birmingham meetings, Clinton said in an interview broadcast by the BBC that President Suharto, in power for 32 years, must find a way to ''deal with all elements of society on some sort of democratic basis. ... This is not a hopeless situation yet.'' Blair, interviewed alongside Clinton, said the turmoil in Indonesia underscored the need for greater financial stability to promote global prosperity. ''What we can do is try and devise the right architecture for the financial systems of the world which leads to greater stability, more openness and more transparency,'' Blair said. The leaders also agreed on urging voter approval in this week's referendum in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic on a peace deal providing for Catholic-Protestant power-sharing in the troubled British province. ''All of us have hope and fear inside,'' Clinton said in the BBC interview. ''I think on election day, the clear-headedness of the Irish people will prevail in Northern Ireland.'' While the G-8 leaders failed to agree on a proposal supported by Blair to erase the debt of the world's poorest nations, the British prime minister tried to put the best face on the disagreement, insisting that the world's powers were united in the goal of cutting debt, especially to the poorest African nations. ^AP-ES-05-17-98 0748EDT TAMPA-05-17-98 0750EDT |
