India test-fires nuclear-capable Agni ballistic missilespite

NEW DELHI, India -- India test-launched a short-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons Thursday, but said it was unrelated to recent posturing by Pakistani and Indian military officials.

The Agni I missile was fired from the Chandipur-on-Sea testing range on the coast of eastern Orissa state, said Defense Ministry spokesman P.K. Bandyopadhyay.

The Agni I has a range of 370 to 500 miles. The test took place about 750 miles southeast of New Delhi.

The United States disapproved of the test and urged India and Pakistan to restrain their nuclear programs. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday "tests like that contribute to a charged atmosphere" in the region.

India said the launch was a routine test. But it came as the Indian and Pakistani governments have been trading ominous boasts about their capability of nuclear retaliation if either takes aggressive military action.

The Agni test is "part of India's continued policy of imposing its hegemony in the region, but we are hardly impressed with what they have done," Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press in Islamabad.

In London, Britain's Foreign Office criticized the Indian missile test, saying it "sends the wrong signals within the region and beyond."

"We believe that restraint in developing possible nuclear weapon delivery systems is in the long-term interest of India and the region," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

On Wednesday, Pakistan's nuclear research facility approved deployment of a new medium-range ballistic missile, the Ghauri, capable of carrying a nuclear payload.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf attended the ceremony at the Kahuta Research Laboratory outside Islamabad.

India and Pakistan -- at odds since they gained independence from Britain in 1947 -- came to the brink of a fourth war last year after New Delhi accused Islamabad's spy agency and Pakistan-based Islamic rebel groups of attacking the Indian Parliament in December 2001. Pakistan denied it.

Intense diplomatic pressure by the United States and others reduced tensions somewhat. Both sides were persuaded to pull back hundreds of thousands of soldiers from their border in October.

Journalists at the Chandipur site said the test was witnessed by Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, who on Tuesday made a chilling prediction of how a nuclear war would turn out.

"There will be no Pakistan left when we have responded," he told a business gathering in southern India. He reiterated India's policy of not striking first with nuclear weapons.

Fernandes was reacting to Musharraf, who on Dec. 29 told a group of air force veterans that he had personally warned India during last year's hostilities to "not expect a conventional war from Pakistan."

His spokesman quickly denied the president was referring to nuclear weapons, and Musharraf said later he meant only that some 150,000 retired Pakistani military personnel living in Kashmir would have risen up against any Indian aggression.

U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill said last year that there was a "small" chance of nuclear war between India and Pakistan at the height of tensions, when about 1 million troops were deployed on their border.

The main dispute between the two countries -- and the focus of two of their three wars -- is their conflicting claims to the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between them.