By IOL South Asia Correspondent

New Delhi, January 2 (IslamOnline)— As India and Pakistan exchanged the list of their nuclear installations Tuesday, January 1, some reports said New Delhi would review its established doctrine not to be the first party to use nuclear weapons.

Exchange of lists of nuclear installations is a New Year ritual observed since the two countries signed an agreement in 1988 prohibiting any side from attacking the other’s nuclear installations.

Indian press reported Thursday, January 2, that some in the military leadership would like to review India’s no-first-use of nuclear weapons doctrine in light of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’ s revelation that he had told world leaders to inform India that if it moved a single step into Pakistani territory “it should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan.”

In the mean time, outgoing Indian armed forces chief Gen. Sunderajan Padmanabhan had told reporters in New Delhi: “We were absolutely ready to go to war. Our forces were well-located.”

Pakistan may not want to engage in a conventional war with New Delhi because of the latter’s larger conventional forces, which have been further bolstered on the assumption that the two nuclear-capable countries would not choose to fight an unwinnable nuclear war and would go for a conventional one.

The Pakistani posture is similar to that of the U.S. during the Cold War when the USSR said it would not be the first party to use nuclear weapons in a Super Power conflict, but the U.S. said it would to neutralize the USSR’ s superiority in conventional forces.

Meanwhile, a military spokesman in Pakistan stressed that in “nowhere did he (President Musharraf) say that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons at all.”

Washington took President Musharraf’ s warning at the peak of the Indo-Pak tension so seriously that it warned Americans to leave India for a while.

The nuclear element somehow seems to have postponed a war that India had almost launched.

India Today, the country’ s premier newsmagazine, carried a cover story late in December saying how the country’ s leadership had almost ordered an invasion of Pakistan last year.

Pakistan tried to ward off the invasion by telling American and British leaders that it would not fight a conventional war imposed on it.

To show it meant what it said, Pakistan launched a few missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. That pulled the two sides from the war brink.