"Israel is worried about the dangerous proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East in the wake of the nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan," Israeli government spokesman David Bar-Ilan told Voice of Israel radio.

The problem, he said, was not the fact that Pakistan was a Muslim country, but the fear that the nuclear tests "might encourage Baghdad and Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons".

Mr Bar-Ilan said that Israel had not changed its position to the effect that it would not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.

Pakistan 'not a threat'

Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Silvan Shalom said his government did not see the Pakistani nuclear tests as a threat to Israel, although it did intend to monitor the situation "closely".

"We do not view Pakistan as our enemy. Pakistan has never been Israel's enemy, Pakistan has never threatened Israel," the official told Israel Defence Forces radio.

But he added that Pakistan's status as a Muslim country was "definitely a factor to be taken into consideration".

Asked about the possible transmission of nuclear know-how from Pakistan, Mr Shalom expressed Israel's concern about Iran potentially acquiring nuclear capability.

"Clearly, the Iranian threat is much more significant than this threat, due to its greater proximity and more threatening accessibility," Mr Shalom told the radio.

Tehran says arms race should end "immediately"

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mahmud Mohammadi said the Pakistani tests represented a serious danger to regional stability and called on India and Pakistan to end their nuclear arms race "immediately" and join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

He said the blame for the crisis lay with the world's declared nuclear powers - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

"This is a race which has been caused by the weakness of the five nuclear powers' political will because they have failed to agree to the international community's wish for complete nuclear disarmament," he said.

Tests cause "regret and distress"

In a Friday sermon broadcast on Iranian radio, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati called the tests by India and Pakistan "a cause for regret and distress".

"You are all aware of the latest incidents in India and Pakistan. It is really regrettable," Ayatollah Jannati said.

"Nuclear tests are now a threat, an alarm bell, wherever they may take place. May God curse those who first started them and those who are still pursuing that path and tell others not to do so," he said.

"The fact that they have taken place in this region in the East and in neighbouring Islamic countries, is really cause for regret and distress."

Muted Arab reaction

In contrast to the quick response from Israel and Iran, reaction in the Arabic-speaking world to Pakistan's tests was less forthcoming.

Giving an Egyptian view in response to journalists' questions, Foreign Minister Amr Musa warned that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was now "up in the air", the Egyptian news agency MENA reported.

The time had come to implement President Husni Mubarak's initiative to free the Middle East from weapons of mass destruction, primarily nuclear weapons, Musa said.

'First Islamic bomb'

The London-based Arabic newspaper 'Al-Quds al-Arabi', however, hailed Pakistan for having succeeded in producing "the first Islamic nuclear bomb".

"It is to be hoped that this Pakistani surprise will act as a lesson to the Arab nation and its leaders and encourage them to move in the right direction and acquire the means of power, so that we do not remain a sitting duck for the ambitions and supremacy of other nations," the editorial said.

"It is essentially logical to welcome the Islamic Pakistani bomb and the Hindu Indian bomb, because the two states have succeeded in breaking the West's monopoly on this dangerous weapon, which it has used as a sword to brandish at all the peoples of the Third World," it said.

"It is to be hoped that the Arab regimes will try to benefit in a positive way from the experiences of the two states in order to develop a similar nuclear programme to produce the first Arab nuclear bomb and achieve strategic balance with the Hebrew state," `Al-Quds al-Arabi' said.