The estimates are higher than the current widely accepted view that India can now produce a maximum of 65 bombs while Pakistan can make at the most 25 bombs, the respected international security journal said.

The London-based magazine said that new information provided by the Canadian Nuclear Association on the performance of Canadian nuclear reactors in India and Pakistan led to the revised projections on the amount of nuclear material produced in both the countries. India has eight CANDU-design power reactors and one Canadian research reactor while Pakistan's one nuclear power reactor is a CANDU, it said.

Toronto-based author Ian Steer, who specializes in defence and science issues, said in a telephonic interview that the new estimates raise fears that India could produce at least 800 atomic bombs over the next 10 years and Pakistan could make more than 200 bombs.

As of July 1, 1998, India's 10 nuclear power reactors and three of its six nuclear research reactors have produced 3,299 kg of plutonium, the key ingredient of its nuclear weapons, JIR said.

Seventeen per cent of this plutonium, or 567 kg is weapons-grade and the rest is less efficient reactor-grade plutonium which can still be used to make nuclear weapons, it said.

The weapons-grade and reactor-grade plutonium can potentially be used to make 455 atomic bombs, the journal said. Colin Hunt of the Canadian Nuclear Association was quoted as saying that, ``so far as is known, India's power reactors have not been used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, and none of the reactor-grade plutonium they have produced has been diverted for weapons purposes.''

Jane's noted, however, that if India's reactor-grade plutonium, which is not under international safeguards, is separated from the spent nuclear reactor fuel, it can be converted into 243 atomic bombs very quickly.'' In Pakistan, Jane's said, the estimate that the country can produce a maximum of 25 atomic bombs doesn't take into account plutonium for at least 38 weapons produced by the country's CANDU reactor.

Pakistan now uses highly enriched uranium in its nuclear weapons but within a few years a new plutonium production reactor at Khusab will allow the country to build plutonium-based atom bombs, JIR said.

In addition, the magazine said, closer analysis of Pakistan's two uranium enrichment plants indicates their combined production to date is two-and-a-half times greater than previously believed.