US turned blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear plot: Declassified documents

NEW DELHI: Declassified US State Department documents on Afghanistan from late 1970s and 1980s reveal that Washington, in agreement with Beijing, turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear programme in lieu of Islamabad’s support to push out Soviet Union from Kabul.

A confidential report, dated August 20, 1984, now declassified, says that by 1984 Washington knew that Islamabad had acquired the capability to build nuclear weapons.

“Despite public and private assurances by President Zia (ul Haq) that Pakistan has neither the intention, means, nor capability to acquire nuclear explosives, we have extensive and convincing intelligence that the Pakistanis are pressing forward to perfect the design of a nuclear weapon, fabricate nuclear weapon components, and acquire the necessary nuclear material for such a device,” the report says.


Other documents show that the then Chinese President Deng Xiaoping not only convinced Washington to tolerate Pakistan’s nuclear programme, but also persuaded it to start giving more military and financial aid to Islamabad. Deng worked closely with Zia to convince the then Jimmy Carter administration that India under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would be pro-Soviet.