The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 2

2 I NEWS The Guardian Thursday May 14 1998 Clinton imposes sanctions as defiant India conducts more tests and Islamabad attacks 'provocation' Plea for Pakistani restraint It wasn't us and if it was, it was right ian Black in London, M. R. Narayan in New Delhi and Ian Traynor In Potsdam itr ana fTlCf 111 IMHMI II 1 1 i I -mmm wmca ow mm mm 5.ifiBi.v tizsmgr mm mm of Captain Peacock, the masculinity of Mr Humphries, and the youthful vigour of Young Mister Then Mr Blair was sent to the canvas by of all people Gerald Hovvarth, the Tory MP for Aldershot, who is thought, even by his colleagues, to be a few synapses short of a brain. "How can the Prime Minister take credit for success in Sierra Leone when he claims he did nothing to bring it about?" Mr Howarth asked. It was an excellent question, going to the heart of the Government's defence: we did nothing wrong, and if we did, it was for the right reasons.

Mr Blair looked shocked. He had not claimed that Britain had done nothing, or so he claimed. We had sent a ship, HMS Cornwall (most military textbooks suggest warships are of only marginal use in jungle fighting). We had sent money for schools and hospitals. (How many military juntas have been driven to defeat by the arrival of funds for school textbooks? As Corporal Jones would say, they don't like Fowler's Modern English Usage up 'em.) There was a difference between helping properly and helping improperly "I know they don't understand the difference, but we do." Mr Blair maintains there is a crucial difference between arms-for-Sierra Leone and arms-for-Iraq.

And he is right. Democrats in Freetown, good; baddies in Baghdad, bad. But there is also a crucial similarity: in both cases, government blaming the opposition for the trouble they find themselves in, and it just won't do. Nor will blaming the press. The Sierra Leone scandal had been "rolling around the news schedules the fact that they decide something is of huge PAKISTAN: was under intense international pressure last night not to follow India by carrying out its own nuclear tests after President Bill Clinton swiftly announced punitive sanctions against New Delhi.

Islamabad angrily accused India of having "gone berserk" after it defied condemnation of three tests on Monday to cany out two more underground blasts yesterday. It called them "reckless and highly provocative actions that had fundamentally altered the strategic situation in South President Clinton telephoned Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from Germany after signing the documents imposing sanctions because of "India's terrible He then sent the United States deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, to Pakistan on a mission to dissuade Islamabad from following suit. The US defence secretary, William Cohen, warned that India's tests would lead to a nuclear arms race in the developing world. "There will be a chain reaction There will be other countries that see this as an open invitation to try to acquire this technology," he told a Senate subcommittee. But Mr Sharif said Pakistan had to give priority to its own security needs and to take "appropriate With Western intelligence officials warning that Pakistan is able to conduct its own tests at once, it is a race against time to see if it can be dissuaded.

Islamabad called yesterday's detonation of two "sub-kiloton" devices, testing tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use, "particularly There was speculation that India might now sign up to the Comprehensive Test Ban Dome Simon Hoggart MR NICK Hawkins (C, Surrey Heath) wanted to know why the Prime Minister had spent an hour last week claiming that Wim Duisenberg was so desperate to leave his job as head of the new European Central Bank that he wanted to renounce it even before his appointment. Mr Hawkins pronounced the name Why, he inquired, had Mr Dwee-zen-berg later said that he hoped to stay in the job for the full eight years, provided he kept his health? Mr Blair kicked into exasperated schoolmaster mode. "Let me settle one thing, once and for all," he said impatiently. "I am told it is 'Ztoy-zen-berg'." It was the last thing he was able to settle once and for all through the whole of Prime Minister's Questions. They were awful, for him at least.

I half expected all the Labour backbench bleepers to go off and instruct: "You may now commit suicide." First of all Mr Blair suffered the humiliation of being knocked all over the place by William Hague. (Mr Hague is a highly successful parliamentary performer. Often he makes Mr Blair look shifty, evasive and petulant. His backbenchers cheer up no end when he is on form. Yet the country is unimpressed.

Can anyone seriously imagine Prime Minister Hague?) The Tory leader said the Foreign Office was being run by a Dad's Army Outfit, with Robin Cook combining "the pompousness of Captain Mainwaring, the incompetence of Private Pike, and the calm of Corporal (Actually you can roll out this kind of abuse forever, since sitcom characters are written to be peculiar. Try it yourself; Are You Being Served? will do. "Mr Hague combines the diffident charm Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, outside his New Delhi residence yesterday PHOTOGRAPH SUNIL MALHOTRA tionalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pricked their fingers and affixed signatures in blood to back the tests. Britain's Foreign Office minister, Derek Fatchett, told the Indian High Commissioner Britain was "deeply disturbed by the implications of the tests for peace and stability in South New arms race, page 14 Demonstrators support the Treaty (CTBT) to head off further censure. But it would have to be quick to avoid the measures imposed under a US non-proliferation law, ending aid and credit to India.

Japan, Canada, Sweden and Denmark all announced they were imposing or considering sanctions. But a lack of enthusiasm elsewhere could create rifts at tomorrow's Group of Eight summit in Birmingham. India's justification of the tests because of perceived threats from China and Pakistan. "We cannot see how any of these concerns will be effectively addressed by testing nuclear weapons," Karl Inderfurth, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, told Congress. But in New Delhi the mood was defiant, with one senior official saying the tests had plan to reduce Third World debt Powerful support for millennium bonds scheme to raise 750m corrected an "asymmetry" in the region, a line consistent with New Delhi's resentment that the CTBT and the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty legitimise the possession of nuclear weapons by the five big powers but deny others the right to acquire them.

India said the five tests completed its planned series of experimental blasts. Supporters of the Hindu na- uting Lottery money to the dome, also backs the scheme. Supporters said the money raised would complement the efforts of Mr Brown, who at the weekend G8 summit in Birmingham will try to persuade Japan, Germany and others to sign up for a debt reduction scheme. The dome would be used to sell and promote the bonds, which would also be available in supermarkets, schools and churches. The bonds would be burnt at a statue to be built at Meridian Point, on the international dateline.

Those directly involved in the scheme refused to comment yesterday for fear of jeopardising it, but Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, who has been party to the discussions, said: "The dome is still controversial and still needs the big idea that Britain should be having for the millennium. Here is a chance to use the dome for something that is the most idealistic and practical of all the ideas put on the table for the millennium." Mr Hughes asked Tony Painful miracle of being born anew Ewen MacAskill, Chief Political Correspondent THE Government is holding behind-the-scenes discussions with leading figures from banking, the churches and the arts to make the Millennium Dome the centrepiece of an ambitious multi-million pound project to reduce Third World debt. The plan is to launch millennium bonds at the dome on January 2, 2000, 24 hours after it is officially opened. The 1, 5 and 100 bonds will be offered to the public and companies to raise at least 750 million to help with debt cancellation. The project will end at the dome on December 31 2000 when the bonds will be burnt on a giant bonfire.

The scheme, called the Bondfire Project, is the biggest effort yet to change the Tony Blair told the Commons: "It is deeply disturbing that these nuclear tests have been carried out." But his spokesman said Britain would not impose sanctions. Nor will Russia, a close Indian ally and at odds with the US on Iraq, or France, which faced outrage over its own Pacific tests before signing the CTBT. The US yesterday rejected The Millennium Dome, where give his backing. "It is sensitive at the moment. It is just about to crystallise.

But it will go ahead, with or without government backing." The proposal has powerful supporters, particularly Ken Costa, vice-chairman of merchant bankers Warburg Dillon Read and an evangelical Christian. Others are Sir The crowd cheered and shouted "Suharto must step down!" and "Freedom!" The city swirled with rumours of an imminent purge in the military. General Wiranto, commander of the armed forces, is reportedly in trouble. Seen as a relative liberal, he has ordered an investigation of Tuesday's killings at Trisakti University. His main rival is Mr Suharto's son-in-law, Probowo Su-bianto, who heads the elite strategic command, Kostrad.

Conspiracy theories have taken flight, with many now believing university bloodshed was a provocation by hardline sections of the military rather than a tragic mis importance doesn't mean that it We all heard the echo of his new friend, John Major. Finally David "Rizla" Prior (he has confessed to being a youthful pothead) asked if he believed that our relations with India, the Middle East and West Africa had been handled by the Foreign Secretary "with great It was a brilliant trap. There is only one permitted answer "Yes" which Mr Blair duly gave, and it brought the House down. more naturally together. Both were written for television in the 1960s and show Pinter exploring the nature of desire, possession, male insecurity and Sphinx-like femininity.

The Collection hinges on what did or did not take place one night in a Leeds hotel; whether Bill, the working-class lover of the possessive Harry, slept with the enigmatic Stella. The delight in this production lies in seeing Pinter himself play Harry. With his Japanese silk dressing gown, he exudes a brutish sophistication and gives full value to the speech in which Harry savagely describes his lover as a "slum What also emerges from Joe Harmston's production is the sense of primitive male fear. At the end Douglas Hodge as Stella's ceaselessly inquiring, sexually ambiguous husband is reduced to quivering helplessness, while Lia WiUiams maintains her silken silence. Hodge and Williams re-appear as husband and wife in The Lover, a classic study of bourgeois sexuality and of the need for married partners to retreat into enlivening fantasy.

It's Noel Coward on the surface, Strindberg underneath, an extraordinary study of the erotic games people play. My only complaint about Joe Harmston's production is that it pre-empts the moment when bongos turn out to be a sexual weapon. But Hodge hits the right note of panic, and Williams of fetishistic control. The play proves that Pinter writes as well about sex as anyone in the business. Blair at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday about linking the dome and the debt campaign but Mr Blair skirted round it.

Andrew Simms, a Christian Aid spokesman, said if the bond scheme was taken up, there would be reason to celebrate the millennium and "all will be forgiven on the The millennium bond idea came from Baptist minister Steve Chalke, who founded the London-based charity. Oasis, which runs projects for the homeless in London as well as development projects in Brazil, India and Africa. One reservation expressed by rival aid agencies is about how the money raised will be spent. There are strong objections to the money going directly to the creditors, whether banks or governments. But the campaigners said this was one issue under discussion and there were ways round it.

A question of political will, page 6 President Suharto seen chuckling on state television 9NmBv7T image of the dome, blunting criticism of it as a vacuous Disneyland exercise and instead linking it with a moral crusade. A Mori poll showed overwhelming support for marking the millennium through debt relief rather than building the dome. The minister responsible for the dome, Peter Mandel-son, is believed to support the scheme and to have sent it to other ministers for consideration. The International Development Secretary, Clare Short, is also thought to back it, though with some reservations about how the money will be spent. The Treasury, which is expected to give its verdict on the plan in the next week, has sent out mixed signals.

The initial reaction was to dismiss it as a stunt. But a source involved in lobbying the Treasury was optimistic the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, will audience as he called on the government to "acknowledge its sin and evil deeds and change its Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of the country's founding president, Sukarno, also urged on the students. Her father was overthrown by Mr Suharto in the 1966 student and military revolt, Indonesia's only post-independence change of leadership. The matronly and reluctant opposition leader broke weeks of silence to rally the protesters and urge calm on the military: "We ask you in the armed forces to realise what you are doing. If you use force, you use it against your own people." From Jakarta's slums, a seething anger takes grip Michael Billington 3 by Harold Pinter Donmar Warehouse AT?" ran an old Bob Hope joke.

I "The fireman had to make two trips." My advice would be to do the same with this trio of Pinter plays at the Donmar Warehouse: one night to see A Kind Of Alaska, and another to catch The Collection and The Lover. Taken together they make for a long, if fascinating, evening. A Kind Of Alaska, as directed by Karel Reisz, stands up magnificently on its own. This 1985 play, derived from an Oliver Sacks case history, shows its heroine, Deborah, awakening from a 29-year sleeping sickness. Pinter captures with brilliant economy the strangeness that Deborah has not only existed in some other world but is locked into a teenage past.

Penelope Wilton's performance is astonishing. She suggests the "laughing nature" of this English upper-class girl suspended in time and half existing in a world of balls and parties and boyfriends. But she also conveys the shock of resurrection. When Bill Nighy's sympathetic doctor tells her that she has been asleep for 29 years, Wilton's features move from amusement to disbelief to dumbfounded horror in one seamless reaction. This is consummate acting, as the heroine adjusts to the painful miracle of being born anew.

The other two plays belong the bonds would be launched Richard Eyre, the former National Theatre director who is carrying out a government review into the arts, and Martin Lambie-Nairn, a leading light in television branding who drew up the logos for the BBC and Channel 4. The head of the Millennium Commission, Jenny Page, who is responsible for distrib calculation by exhausted and ill-trained riot forces. Standing over Mr Hartan-to's freshly dug grave, a lecturer from the University of Indonesia, Mohamad Billah, pointed to the shrouded body and said: "This is the symbol of our democracy, of the people's sovereignty. It has been killed by the military What happened was not by accident but by command." Mr Suharto, the world's longest-serving ruler after Fidel Castro, has vowed to complete his seventh five-year term, which began in March. Calls for his departure, though, coloured even the funeral ceremony.

A relative of one of the buried undergradu continued from page 1 an accusation now being voiced across the country: "Suharto and the Armed Forces are Amien Rais, the leader of a 28 million-strong Islamic movement called Mohamme-diya told students massed for a memorial ceremony to step up their three-month-long protest campaign. "We are not going to stop. We are going to continue until reforms are completed. We must be braver. We must take courage from this.

We must fight for the people not our own interests. We have to be unified so we can be victorious." Applause and cheers cascaded through his ates thanked the crowd for sharing his family's grief and asked through a bullhorn: "How can we repay you?" A mourner shouted back: "With a life." Another spelled out the message more clearly: "With the life of Suharto." The tombstones of neighbouring graves seemed to taunt the death of Mr Har-tanto so soon after he turned 21. He now shares a plot with two men: one was 70 when he died, the other was 69. Dimas, the technical university undergraduate, pondered the injustice. "I'm going to have my 21st birthday in two days," he said.

"I hope 1 make it." Mr Suharto turns 77 next month. mm.