The American bias manifested itself through out Thursday in briefings by administration officials following the nuclear tests by Pakistan, Indian officials maintained. And nowhere was it more pronounced than in the White House, where Press Secretary Mike McCurry appeared to condone the Pakistani tests while outright accusing India of duplicity.

"We would acknowledge that there's a difference in the way these two governments have dealt with the US with respect to this test," McCurry said in what Indian officials said was a startling display of prejudice. Prime Minister Sharif was honest and straightforward in the description of the decision that he was wrestling with and in his own internal deliberations. And the government of India was manifestly not.

Indian officials said the Clinton administration was accusing New Delhiof deceit to cover up its own failure to understand Indian concerns and incomprehension of the Indian system and politics. India had always said it was keeping the nuclear option open and not signed any non-proliferation treaty and therefore broken no international laws. Allegations of deceit and duplicity were hurtful and damaging to Indo-US ties, officials said.

What angered Indian officials even more was McCurry's suggestion that the administration will view Indian and Pakistani tests differently. "We will have to assess that in coming days and see if there are different ways in which we could clearly express displeasure with what we think is a wrong decision, but clearly acknowledge that there is some difference between the respective decisions," he said.

Officials said McCurry appeared to have forgotten that according to successive US administration, it was Pakistan's nuclear programme which was built around deceit and deception. State Department records used the word stolen to describe how Pakistanacquired centrifuge technology to make bomb grade fissile material.

McCurry's spin was consonant with the Clinton administration's stepped up India-bashing programme. Notwithstanding President Clinton's initial pronouncements that he understood New Delhi's security concerns in conducting the tests (though it was a mistake), other senior administration mandarins have, in the words of one Indian official brought out the knives.State Department spokesman James Rubin, a political appointee and a confidant of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has been particularly offensive in attacking Indian government leaders and painting the bleakest picture of India's future.

Earlier this week, Rubin launched yet another diatribe against New Delhi, saying US sanctions would cost India billions upon billions upon billions of dollars (sounding rather like Carl Sagan, an Indian official said) while listing less than $ 15 billion dollars in guarantees which would be affected.

Ironically, the one commentator who hasbeen balanced about the whole scenario is Dr Henry Kissinger, co-author with late President Richard Nixon of the infamous American tilt towards Pakistan during the 1971 war.

In several fora, Kissinger has argued that India had every right to conduct the tests given its strategic concerns. Indian officials noted that this was despite Kissinger's strong links with China.

But other analysts say India has brought out the worse in the Clinton administration by dissing it with not just the tests, but with its rhetoric after the tests. If anything, there was a very clear US tilt towards India before the tests. Washington was regarding India as great power and Pakistan was fast becoming a basket case. In just one month, India has changed it and indelibly bracketed itself with Pakistan, said George Perkovich, a proliferation expert who is now rushing to complete his book on the nuclear programmes of the two countries.

Accounts of how Clinton tried to coax Sharif away from conducting tests in the US media wereparticularly poignant-enough, an Indian official said acidly, to bring tears to your eyes.

"There was anguish in Sharif," one US official was quoted as saying. "This was a man between a nuclear rock and a hard place. He was saying, `I wish I did not have these forces acting on me, but people are demonstrating in the streets, the editorialists and the Opposition are demanding I test. You have to understand my position.' He as much as said this was out of his hands."

The accounts said US officials were also well aware of what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described as the "overwhelming domestic pressures and regional dynamics" forcing Sharif's hand. The pressures were so intense that Sharif's government might have fallen had he not tested, Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and strong Pakistan supporter who was the administration's back channel to Nawaz Sharif, said.

"A pity they did not understand our security concerns about nuclear transactions between China and Pakistan for over a decade. Or thecross border terrorism we have faced. A pity they did not appreciate our restraint of 24 years," a senior Indian diplomat said.