Although US officials tried to downplay Pakistan's claim that it had matched and mounted nuclear warheads on its medium range Ghauri missile -- and some American experts expressed scepticism about the claim -- Islamabad's show of machismo sent a shudder of alarm and worry through the policy makers and analysts.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan lent voice to Pakistani belligerence in several television interviews by threatening to respond with nuclear attacks on Indian cities in retaliation to any Indian misadventure. Khan, whose rabid rhetoric and bellicosity has gone practically unnoticed by the Clinton administration, said plainly that Pakistan's Ghauri missile would carrynuclear warheads not flowers, and would devastate Indian cities.

"If the Pakistani official announcement that they are mating warheads with missiles is true, they have crossed an important threshold. The Indians don't have a match," Michael Krepon, an arms control expert who heads the Stimson Center in Washington said.

The administration however is still playing coy about Pakistan's self-acknowledged nuclear missiles. Asked about Islamabad's weaponisation and what the US could do about it, Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott said the most honest way to deal with that question is not to answer it with great specificity -- or at least that wouldn't be both honest and responsible.

Ignoring the fact that no Indian leader has spoken of launching nuclear attacks on Pakistan, Talbott said both sides has made statements that had the potential of further provocation, deterioration and escalation. Talbott however said that the US did not have any information to back Pakistan's claim that an Indian attack on itsnuclear installations were imminent prior to its test. "I am pretty sure I would have seen it if it was taken seriously by our folks... there have been a lot of charges and counter charges, many of them, as best we can tell, without foundation," Talbott said.