A forced magnetic reconnection process with a temporal evolution of resitivity is studied for a plasma sheet with a nonuniform resistivity profile based on the nonlocal mode structure of the lower hybrid drift type instability. The growth rate of the mode found is almost indepedent of the resistivity at the neutral sheet, but depends on the reistivity of the region of maximum density gradient away from the neutral sheet. We study this by using both a nonlinear numerical MHD simulation and a linear theory. The mode may be relevant to the prevalent theoretical concept of MHD reconnection and the localized anomalous resisitivity profile based on the lower hybrid drift instability. ¿American Geophysical Union 1991