He was joined in the studio by the BBC's Defence Correspondent, Jonathan Marcus:

ROBIN: Do your have any doubts at all about the wisdom of India having conducted these tests?

MR SRINIVAS, BANGALORE INDIA: Not at all, I feel we are fully justified in conducting these tests because France, Britain etc, they are our friendly neighbours and I don't see why they should develop missiles and we can't, whereas Pakistan and China have been developing missiles and trying to intimidate us - I think we are fully justified in making these missiles.

ROBIN: You are not worried that what is happening now is a beginning of a new nuclear arms race?

MR SRINIVAS: I don't think this is a beginning of an arms race because already arms are being made and they are being collected and being stocked everywhere and its already started by all the super powers.

ROBIN: Omar, what do you make of what India has been doing?

OMAR KHAN - KARACHI, PAKISTAN: I think it is a very sorry state of affairs because this was an excellent opportunity for both the nations to combine together and look at things economically, take advantage of each other comparatively and we could have had a sub-continent free of arms where the poor get the basic necessities of life. Because of these nuclear detonations, what it means for Pakistan is, that Sharif has a very difficult choice to make. He has 85% like India that will want a nuclear detonation and if he doesn't do that he looses the election and the intellectuals who have been warning him not to have a detonation, have an issue because thay don't even go and vote so if Pakistan detonates then we have an issue again because all the funds which we need for the economic development of the sub-continent will go into arms and in the end, nobody wins.

ROBIN : Lets see what Mr Sriniverse has to say about that?

MR SRINIVAS: I don't see why we are being sidelined for this because just because India has made some missiles doesn't mean that we are targeting Pakistan whereas China has been developing missiles all the way and they are also a neighbour of Pakistan and I don't know why Pakistan is reacting now.

ROBIN: Omar?

OMAR: I really think that the question of detonation isn't that the West has never allowed other countries to become nuclear, the question is simple, we have politicians of both the countries who are on bad grounds. We do not have the proper control for nuclear weapons, I won't be surprised if these nuclear weapons get into the hands of Hindu extremists or the Muslim fundamentalists. We have such a short distance between the two countries, that even if there is a slight doubt that somebody has launched a nuclear weapon, there could be a full scale nuclear war.

ROBIN: Mr Naqvi , do you worry about what has been happening over the last few days?

MR NAQVI, BOSTON, US: Indeed I do, the world is going towards nuclear disarmament and it is so sad that the South Asian region, where we could have had economic cooperation, we are leading towards a nuclear escalation.

ROBIN: You think it's sad, you don't think probably, at least in the medium term, this could result in a greater degree of of equalibrium in the region?

MR NAQVI: The political situation in India particularly, if the weapon comes into some fanatic on either side, we could have a nuclear bomb fired at one of the Indian or Pakistani cities, which is disaster.

ROBIN: Peter Hailey-Dunn , what do you think about this?

MR HALEY-DUNN, BUDAPEST HUNGARY : I'm very sad because I remember back in the late 40's, 50's and 60's India had a terrific reputation for a positive form of neutrality, an active form of neutrality, who went out into the world and initiated a sense of consciousness about the Cold War and helped to calm it down and now she seems to have taken a complete reverse step which is extremely disappointing given this historical perspective.

ROBIN : Why is it not possible to be neutral as you describe it, and also be in nuclear power?

MR HALEY-DUNN: It is possible to be a nuclear power, we do accept and expect standards of responsibility from the previous 5 existing nuclear powers and it's inevitable that one day more people should declare themselves as nuclear powers and we could also expect India could behave responsibly but it's still a big disappointment and we have to look at the double standards applied now because Iraq set up a press conference saying we have a nuclear weapon, do you think that the 8 summits would have issued such a wishy washy statement, of course not.

ROBIN: I think Prassad Shastri in Boston would agree with that, do you think the West is being hypocritical

PRASSAD: Yes, I think it's also being very arrogant. If you look at the Nuclear plan being unveiled by the US and while the five nuclear powers continue to stock US Nuclear weapons. You have to look at the politics in the area, China and Pakistan. No one is going to come to our rescue and China continues to defy all international doctrine and do whatever they want and America turns a blind eye. You cannot have and have not. The US is trying to propose a world order that is based on inequality and government by dominance.

ROBIN: Are you saying that everyone should have a nuclear weapon, it would make the world a very dangerous place.

PRASSAD: No I think it's to the contrary, I think that if you really want nuclear disarmament you cannot have few countries that have them and tell the other to give up. Because if you see a need for them you can't justify that other countries don't have a need for it. It's very subjective, you can always see a need for it.

ROBIN: Jonathan there is this argument that five powers have the nuclear bomb they have been saying that their going to keep it but we don't think that any one else should have it.

JONATHAN: One can well understand the charges of hypocrisy. The five nuclear powers joined the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as five nuclear powers with a long-term aim of getting rid of those nuclear weapons. The disarmament campaigners etc. argue that those powers could have done a lot more to get rid of those weapons. The troubled is the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which dates back to 1968 which has been signed by most countries of the world did acknowledge that there were only going to be five nuclear powers. If we accept that nuclear weapons were a bad thing the fewer countries that have it the better. And the fact that these five countries have it for historical reasons is unfortunate but the line should be drawn there. We know that Israel, India, Pakistan, the threshold states did have the capacity to build one as the Indians have shown, but at least with the ambiguity surrounding their programmes this fiction of keeping five could be maintained. The world and its diplomacy and the arms control movement didn't have to accept that someone broke this norm and I think that's why the criticism of India has come so strongly. And if one is talking of arrogance and hypocrisy I think the Indian argument is not very different from the American one. The Americans say we are very responsible we can have it, we don't want anybody else to have. The Indians say the same thing.

ROBIN: Rory Kirk, Mauritian living in South Africa. What's your view about this?

RORY: I think there are two view I can see. I think the International community is in agreement that the tests were stupid.. What I found quite interesting was the mass of nationalist pride that came out of India directly after the testing and that all the schools were teaching about the nuclear wonder and I was wondering whether the government was able to dupe the press into generating some major PR campaign to make the Indians proud and to cover up something that I believe is as stupid as a kid playing with something they were told not to play with.

ROBIN: Why do you think duping would be necessary. Don't you think that people would be proud that they had acquired a weapon which until now has been possessed only by the biggest and most industrialised countries in the world?

RORY: I think the press of India is well known to be a mature and independent press, and in this case they have stood up and said "great India we have shown the rest of the world aren't' we clever". And yet the implications of this test - a follow up test by Pakistan and another one by India the ever escalating race which won't stop if Pakistan tests now. The fact they say if France did it so can we. These are all indicative of an immature government. I wouldn't have thought that a mature press would have carried the ball like they did.

ROBIN: Sunil Karnik is calling from Bombay. Do you feel proud today?

SUNIL: Yes definitely. Why do the five powers feel they should be the only members in this group. The question is not whether nuclear weapons are bad, they should definitely be banned but that you think about a country that has China as its neighbour. They are aggressive towards us, they support Pakistan. On top of this they have developed nuclear weapons and in 1995-96 they conducted more tests when there was no need to. Don't you think that India needs to be secure from them?

ROBIN: Do you think that there is now less chance of India being attacked by someone who has access to nuclear weapons than there was before these tests were carried out - Do you feel safer?

SUNIL: It's not a question of being safer. But now the world knows we have nuclear weapons no one will attack us because they know we will retaliate.

ROBIN: So you do feel safer?

SUNIL: Definitely.

ROBIN: Jonathan Markus

JONATHAN: It's interesting the strategic rational for India's decision. There's very large element of domestic politics about it. In conventional military terms, non-nuclear terms, India is vastly more powerful than Pakistan. India's relations with China had been improving and of course China which is modernising its armed forces considerably but its focusing on extending South into the South China Sea. All things that don't effect India. The China element is really critical because explains the complexity - the triangular relationship,. It also explains why the Americans have found it so difficult to deal with this problem, not least because the Indians are right to say the Chinese have been helping Pakistan with it's nuclear and missile programme but America has done very little to stop this. They believe that the relationship between Beijing and Washington has to be managed and the nuclear programme is only one element in that.

ROBIN: Mujhad Hassiva, Medina, Saudi Arabia what do you think about this?

MUJHAD: I am very concerned about the muted response from the Europeans and the Americans. They have sent a delegation to Pakistan instead of to India.

ROBIN: But they have also announce sanctions against India

MUJHAD: But they are very watered down and don't amount to anything

ROBIN: Do you think that this is as an implied threat against Muslims everywhere.

MUJHAD: I think the west is concerned about Muslims getting a bomb and are not at all concerned about the Indians having one. It is very far from and they are not bothered, they only worried that now Pakistan is forced to explode one to defend itself.

ROBIN: You are worried about double standards

MUJHAD: They are very obviously double standards, in Birmingham when everyone met they hardly talked about Indians bombs.

ROBIN: Well they did put out a statement I have it front of me "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction threatens the security of every nation".

MUJHAD: These statements don't amount to much. The Indian leaders are already rejoicing about the muted response of the West, they think they are Kings of South Asia

ROBIN: Donna Marie Leenon, Coffrane, Switzerland

DONNA-MARIE: I think you are focusing on India and Pakistan's nuclear capabilities but they aren't the only closet nuclear powers. South Africa is as well although that doesn't worry me much. I defend Israel's right to exist but them having to defend that right using atomic weapons terrifies me. One last point about the previous call, there are 100 million Muslims in India, and his opinion that it's a Hindu / Muslim problem is silly.

ROBIN: Jonathan Markus, there are a number of nations around the world that are thought to be acquiring a nuclear power, do you think that what has happened makes it more likely that these nations will begin their own race.

JONATHAN: Not in the short term, the non-proliferation treaty should be defended. In 10-15 years the world will maybe be a little different. The only countries we believe to have the bomb apart from India and Pakistan is Israel which has a very secret very sophisticated nuclear deterrent. South Africa is the only country that has willinging given up a nuclear bomb. North Korea and Iraq, both constrained from outside. Indian decision could set precedent.

ROBIN: Leslie Montplassir, Michigan USA

I think it's an outrage that they should divert resources from the abject poverty to developing nuclear weapons.

ROBIN: Well you might think that but it's a government which was elected democratically on a mandate which said that they believed in India being a Nuclear power

LESLIE: It's a government that doesn't have an absolute majority and its using this to give it a majority in the next elections, its a PR stunt.

ROBIN: Well there are lots of poor in the US but they have had a nuclear bomb for years

LESLIE: Not the proportions as in poverty and I think it's an outrage.

ROBIN: Garnett White in Jamaica, do you think the Indians are being reckless?

GARNETT: The ground rules have already been laid by the UN security council - only those with UN capability have permanent seats on the UN Security council.

ROBIN: Do you think that India ought to have a permanent place on the Security council

GARNETT: Yes. Another thing is that Britain and America has allowed themselves to be so preoccupied with Iraq that they didn't see India sneaking up behind them

ROBIN: If you are right and that a permanent seat can be brought on the council it will encourage a lot more people to do down the same path

GARNETT: Hopefully not and that by that time the Security council will find some other means by which developing status on the council.

ROBIN: having a nuclear weapon these days is the only guarantee for sovereignty, Jonathan Markus?

JONATHAN: We might. The are many constraints upon countries to go down this route. Now the cold war is over the old world has not changed quickly enough. US and Russia are talking about having 200000 war heads each..