``If we don't want to see destruction of the kind wreaked upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we must galvanise into action,'' stresses Isa Daudpota, an Islamabad-based nuclear physicist-turned-sustainable development worker and peace activist.

Too much danger is involved, believe peace lobbyists, who worry about unstable, jittery governments on either side, the chronically tense border situation, fuzzy command and control chains and refusal to take seriously the terrible responsibility of possessing nuclear weapons.

``We fervently hope that those clinging to the deterrence theory are right,'' says Dr Inayatullah, a respected scholar, involved in a three-year initiative by liberal Indians and Pakistanis to build a peace bridge between the two countries.

Zahida Hina, well known Karachi-based writer, in hercolumn `Zindagi' (life) in Pakistan's most popular daily Jang, has also consistently warned of escalation of tension in the subcontinent.

She wrote that the skirmishes that take place on the border daily could flare up into a full-fledged war any moment, and this time, war will be fought by non-conventional weapons. India, Pakistan blasted their way into the exclusive nuclear club last month in tit-for-tat tests, triggered by New Delhi's decision to test nuclear bomb capabilities underground after 24 years.

India claimed the tests were made for the country's security, while Islamabad said it was forced to respond, 18 days later, because India had changed the equilibrium. However, the impression that all of Pakistan was out on the street celebrating the country's nuclear coming-of-age has been challenged by peace activists like Tahir Mohammad Khan, a Quetta-based lawyer, who lives just 10 miles away from the nuclear test site in Chagai hills in north-western Baluchistan province.

``I can assure you thatthose sweets were not distributed by the poor and the destitute,'' he said angrily.