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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (43425)	10/31/2002 7:55:29 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50167

US ‘pleaded’ with Pakistan not to explode N-bomb By Khalid Hasan WASHINGTON: Former Indian ambassador to the United States Naresh Chandra said in an interview published here this week that the US “virtually pleaded” with Pakistan not to follow India’s example and stage a nuclear test in 1998 but Nawaz Sharif, “egged on by the army”, went ahead. Chandra, who was the Indian ambassador in Washington when the Pokhran test took place, followed by Pakistan’s Chagai underground nuclear blast, recalled that the American officials took the news of the Indian test “very hard” and felt “let down”. They also said they had been “deceived” by India. During the weeks that followed, the US administration went into “high gear” to dissuade Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from following in India’s footsteps. Strobe Talbot, deputy secretary of state, led a strong delegation to Pakistan and President Bill Clinton phoned the Pakistani leader several times. “Basically, the US offered Pakistan lots of money, tremendous help in India-Pakistan contacts, but Sharif, egged on by the army, thought it would be too heavy a political price to pay not to demonstrate Pakistan’s nuclear capacity,” said Chandra. Chandra disclosed that New Delhi had kept him in the dark about the test and the same was true of the Indian foreign secretary, K. Raghnath. After the first test, the Americans wanted to know from the ambassador if India was going to conduct more tests, but Chandra was unable to tell them anything because he did not know himself. The second test was carried out on 13 May before the US announced sanctions. If sanctions had been announced immediately after the first test, they would have been made more stringent after the second. Chandra recalled that on 13 May Dr Henry Kissinger made a “friendly” phone call to him and offered to write an article reflecting India’s point of view. He agreed with the ambassador that India lived in a “troubled neighbourhood” and thus needed to show that its nuclear deterrence was credible. After the meeting and before flying to Europe, Kissinger went on CNN and said as much, which, the ambassador felt, took some pressure off India. Kissinger told CNN that India had to take care of its national security concerns “which are pretty grim at the moment.” Chandra’s account, published in India Abroad for this week, could come as something of a surprise, if not disappointment, to Islamabad insofar as it shows that Kissinger has a helpful and sympathetic attitude towards India. There is a view in Pakistan that in Kissinger, Pakistan has an old and loyal friend, which it can be assumed must have been why President Pervez Musharraf to received the former US secretary of state in his New York hotel suite during his visit to the US earlier this year.