145. Telegram From the Embassy in India to the Department of State1
9979. Subject: India and the Pakistan Nuclear Problem. Refs: State 140858,2 145772.3
1. (S)–Entire text.
2. Summary: In line with instructions, I met alone for nearly 55 minutes this afternoon with Prime Minister Desai. The atmosphere was relaxed, even at times chatty, but I made no progress along any of the lines suggested in reftels. To us in the Embassy that comes as not a great surprise. End summary.
3. The PM will not accept the idea of a joint non-development, non-use agreement with Pakistan. He said that when they had suggested that he had told them that he had already made a unilateral pledge; if Pakistan did likewise, the two pledges would be as good as a joint statement. When I said that governments change, and more formal agreements may have greater influence on future governments than unilateral pledges, he laughed, said that was not necessarily so, and added, “look at you and Tarapur”. He could not bind a future government in any case, but he hoped the course he had laid down would have influence.
4. When I asked what then he proposed to do about the danger, not only to India but much more widely, should the Pakistanis develop an explosives capability, he said that he proposed to take Zia at his word for now, but if he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, he would act at once “to smash it”. (“It” I take to be the Pak explosives capability.) He said he had recently assured Pak FonSec Shahnawaz that India had only good intentions toward Pakistan and wished to do nothing to cause it difficulties. But also that “if Pakistan tries any tricks, we will smash you”. I gather that he went on to remind Shahnawaz of 1965 and 1971 in order to emphasize India’s readiness to react forcibly when sufficiently provoked.4
5. When I led the conversation into nuclear weapons free zones, he made two sets of observations. (A) So long as the super-powers go on testing atomic weapons and menacing not only each other but the [Page 393] whole world with nuclear weapons, NWFZ’s in his judgment mean nothing.5 He expressed appreciation for SALT II as a “small but important step” and gratification that the CTB negotiations had been resumed.6 He reiterated that until the US and USSR stopped testing and began a program of nuclear disarmament, India could never accept discriminatory safeguards. (B) He also said that in part his public deriding of NWFZ’s was because he was convinced that Pakistan was promoting such a zone for South Asia dishonestly, that it could never be trusted to abide by one, but that he could not say that publicly. He then gave me a fairly long lecture, with illustrations, about how leaders of countries and institutions often have to be careful not to say things that might worsen relations even when they knew the things to be true. His point here again was that he wants to preserve and improve Indo-Pak relations as far as he can in the hope that the Pakistanis will, before it is too late, get more sense about the utility of the limited nuclear capability they may be able to develop.
6. As these views emerged, I decided not to test either the idea of a PRC non-use assurance or that of a high-level, external mediator. As the conversation moved along, both came to me to seem increasingly irrelevant. (Comment: I should add that as talk about some multilateral solution involving the PRC has got around here in India, the introduction of the PRC into the equation has become more and more of an irritant. Perhaps quieter diplomacy undertaken earlier may have had an outside chance—and we never thought it was more than that—of selling that approach. Opinion has now so hardened, that the PRC can never become part of a regional solution, from India’s viewpoint, so long as the PRC has nuclear weapons and India foregoes them.)
7. In response to para 9 of State 140858,7 my view is a time-limited agreement of the sort suggested would be a non-starter here. The attitudes the PM expressed today, as reported above, seem to me to confirm this judgment.
8. Separate message on Tarapur will follow.8
9. Department please repeat above message to Islamabad. And Beijing.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P840148–2616. Secret; Immediate; Nodis.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 144.↩
- Not found.↩
- See footnote 3, Document 353.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 347.↩
- Carter and Brezhnev signed SALT II in Vienna on June 18.↩
- Paragraph 9 of telegram 140858 to New Delhi, June 2, reads: “We would be interested in your views on the probability of Desai accepting a limited arrangement (e.g., 3–5 years) during which the nuclear weapons states would be ‛challenged’ to move on vertical proliferation. We would prefer this not be discussed with Desai at present.” See footnote 2, Document 144.↩
- See Document 146.↩