298. Telegram From the Embassy in Pakistan to the Department of State1
8222. Subj: PRC Denies Intention To Supply Reprocessing Plant.
1. There have been recurrent reports in Islamabad, including vernacular press mentions, that if the French do not deliver on their reprocessing plant contract the PRC will supply Pakistan with a plant. This story first surfaced in the Indian press, and East European diplomats here are promoting it.
2. The PRC Amb Aug 22 categorically assured Amb Hummel that there is no substance whatever to the rumor. The PRC Amb asserted that the PRC would not have any intention to supply such a plant to Pakistan and in any event lacks the capability, having no reprocessing plant of that sort itself.2 He said further that there had been no discussion of the possibility of PRC supply, and no Pak request for the PRC to supply one.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D780344–0117. Confidential. Sent for information to New Delhi, Paris, Beijing, and Tehran.↩
- In telegram 216584 to Islamabad, August 25, the Department acknowledged receipt of Hummel’s report of his meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan and noted: “PRC assurances that Chinese have no intention of aiding Pakistanis in reprocessing seem credible since it would not seem to serve PRC interests to undercut US and French nuclear policy at this time. As a technical matter, however, Department notes that Chinese presumably could provide Pakistan with a reprocessing facility suitable for extraction of plutonium from the spent fuel of the Karachi nuclear power plant (KANUPP) particularly if the fuel were suitably modified. Such a facility could be less sophisticated and versatile than the proposed French plant and thus easier to construct.” (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P840140–2407)↩