Hours after the US dropped the brick on Friday, Indian diplomats were seething at what they see as a brazen discrimination against India which they say makes it even more difficult to manage public opinion on the nuclear issue.

In the past, the national consensus has always been ranged against any deal with what is seen as discriminatory international non-proliferation regimes, and the Indian government was only just beginning to turn things around.``We have nothing against a financial bail-out of Pakistan. We ourselves have always supported Pakistan in the multilateral financial fora. But to use the bail-out excuse anddiscriminate cleverly against India is quite self-serving,'' a key Indian diplomat said.

The official acknowledged the fact that the partial lifting of sanctions would improve market sentiment in India, but said the ``blatant discrimination'' in denying infrastructural loans to India was hurting development at the grassroots.

Indian financial mandarins have been agitated at the manner in which Washington has blocked developmental loans under what they say is a specious excuse that it is mandated by the G-8 and P-5 resolutions. While the sanctions opposed all non-basic human need loans, the US had taken a tough line even in borderline cases -- like in one instance an ADB loan for development of roads.

``They have taken mean advantage of our gentlemanly conduct. Perhaps that's the way yankee business is conducted,'' one official remarked tartly.

Meanwhile, Bank and IMF sources say the Clinton administration is leaning on the multi-lateral institutions to work out an urgent rescue package for Pakistandespite the view in the organisations -- including that of its US Directors -- that Islamabad has badly mismanaged its economy. Officials there are said to be quite unhappy at the line being laid out by the administration.

``The American directors themselves are the worst critics of the Pakistani economy, but there is little they can do. The administration has already infected Bank operations with politics,'' an official familiar with the crisis said.

Among the critics of Pakistanis economy-in-tailspin is Moeen Qureshi, a former vice-president in the Bank who was drafted as the country's caretaker Prime Minister in 1993.

In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper earlier this week, Qureshi said economic mismanagement, and not sanctions, is responsible for Pakistan's current financial crisis.

Successive governments in Pakistan had been spending $ 1 billion in excess of their income on non-developmental work over the last decade and the government met this expenditure by borrowing at high interest ratesfrom foreign and domestic sources thus pushing the country into further debt, Qureshi said.

US officials have no argument with this analysis and say mismanagement or otherwise, the urgent priority now is to rescue Pakistan.

``An unstable Pakistan which collapses financially is not in India's interest either. We are sure India understands that,'' a senior administration official said on Saturday.

Indian officials agree with that assessment but cannot see what that has to do with the continued discrimination against New Delhi. They say even if Washington is hamstrung by the G-8 and P-5 resolutions with regards to World Bank loans there are many other instances of its tilt against New Delhi.

Officials here are bracing against the release of a new entities list which will single out dozens of Indian private sector firms and government departments with whom US businesses will be banned from doing business.``There again India will be discriminated against by a factor of ten to one vis-a-vis Pakistan becausewe have a much more widespread industrial base,'' an official tracking this bombshell said, adding it would further add to the public rancour in India against the US strategy.

Indian officials familiar with defence ties meanwhile placed in a new perspective the resumption with both countries of non-lethal military ties under a program called International Military Exchange and Training (IMET), which US officials presented as an evenhanded relaxation of sanctions.

While acknowledging that India too had benefited from IMET exchanges, the officials pointed out that the relaxation was aimed mainly at restoring the institutional ties between the Pentagon and the Pakistani military which had been frozen since 1990 under the Pressler agreement.

``That need was more urgent. The administration pushed that through even though the prevailing sentiment in the Congress was against it and the IMET clause had been struck down once in the Congress,'' a legislative affairs analyst said.

In sum, Indian officials feelWashington has done far too little to engage India even though New Delhi has gone several extra miles by forswearing further nuclear tests, pledging to sign the CTBT, and agreeing to participate in negotiations on the fissile material cut of treaty.