The Geneva meeting is not expected to take any decision to impose economic sanctions on India and Pakistan - a move already made unilaterally by the United States.

China opposes sanctions on principle and Russia thinks they would make the situation worse; French officials fear that damage to Pakistan's economy, in particular, could prompt it to sell nuclear technology to other Muslim countries.

Britain says it is against punitive measures that would affect aid programmes and hurt ordinary people.

Apart from the sanctions issue, there seems to be broad agreement among the five permanent members of the Security Council on their approach to the crisis, though whether it will be effective is more doubtful.

One element is a demand that India and Pakistan should now refrain from any action that would raise tensions.

Albright's demands

The American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, said there should be no further nuclear testing, no deployment or testing of missiles, no more inflammatory rhetoric, and no more provocative military activity.

The Permanent Five want the two countries to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, something India says it will not do in its present form.

Another key concern of the big powers is to convince the world that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is still valid and dissuade other countries from joining an arms race that would wreck it.

The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said the objective was to convince India and Pakistan that they should sign up to the global non-proliferation regime.

Both American and Russian officials emphasise that they don't recognise the two countries as nuclear weapons powers, and the French say they oppose the idea of changing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The hard facts

Some observers feel this is simply a refusal to recognise reality, but the Permanent Five are trying to stop the situation getting completely out of control.

The South Asian tests have made Arabs ask why they should not have the bomb to match Israel's undeclared arsenal; Israelis are voicing fears that Pakistan will provide nuclear material to Iran; and the Japanese fear a revival of North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.

According to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, there are only five nuclear weapons states - and as it happens, of course, they are the five permanent members of the Security Council.

There's no sign that the five will meet a key Indian complaint by setting a target date for their own nuclear disarmament, though they're likely to re-affirm it as an ultimate aim.

The Kashmir question

The Geneva meeting was also due to discuss ways of helping settle the dispute at the core of Indo-Pakistan hostility: the 50-year-old quarrel over Kashmir.

Pakistan welcomes any move towards international involvment; but India rejects outside mediation, insisting that it's a purely bilateral dispute. The prospects for an early settlement of the South Asian crisis are not encouraging.