Thursday, September 20, 2007
* Report says US against nuclear test because of Indias non-aligned worldview
LAHORE: India could have conducted nuclear tests in February 1965 if it had been given the green signal from Washington - well within a year of the Chinese nuclear blast at Lop Nor in 1964, reported the Times of India on Wednesday.
According to the daily, a recently declassified US State Department memorandum of conversation from February 22, 1965, revealed that Indias Department of Nuclear Energy Secretary Homi J Bhabha explicitly told US Undersecretary of State George W Ball that if India went all out, it could produce a nuclear device in 18 months, and with a US blueprint it could do the job in six months. The memo, along with several other documents, has been reproduced and released for the public in the book India and the United States: Politics of the Sixties by senior journalist Kalyani Shankar, reported the Times. It said that according to the document, the US did not support Indias nuclear test because it was trying to ensure that all major non-nuclear countries renounced nuclear weapons.
US versus India: However, the subtext from several other declassified letters, memorandums and reports of US Directorate of Intelligence, CIA and then American ambassador in Delhi Chester Bowles letters to US officials in Washington reveal that it was Indias inheritance of Nehrus non-aligned worldview and Delhis refusal to support the US in several key international situations through the 1960s that resulted in there being no nuclear agreement between the two countries until the 123 agreement.
The Times also quoted Indira Gandhi, in one of her letters to then-US President Lyndon B Johnson from May 12, 1966, where she described the extent of hostile opposition she faced. daily times monitor
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
India could have been nuclear in 1965 with US help
* Report says US against nuclear test because of Indias non-aligned worldview
LAHORE: India could have conducted nuclear tests in February 1965 if it had been given the green signal from Washington - well within a year of the Chinese nuclear blast at Lop Nor in 1964, reported the Times of India on Wednesday.
According to the daily, a recently declassified US State Department memorandum of conversation from February 22, 1965, revealed that Indias Department of Nuclear Energy Secretary Homi J Bhabha explicitly told US Undersecretary of State George W Ball that if India went all out, it could produce a nuclear device in 18 months, and with a US blueprint it could do the job in six months. The memo, along with several other documents, has been reproduced and released for the public in the book India and the United States: Politics of the Sixties by senior journalist Kalyani Shankar, reported the Times. It said that according to the document, the US did not support Indias nuclear test because it was trying to ensure that all major non-nuclear countries renounced nuclear weapons.
US versus India: However, the subtext from several other declassified letters, memorandums and reports of US Directorate of Intelligence, CIA and then American ambassador in Delhi Chester Bowles letters to US officials in Washington reveal that it was Indias inheritance of Nehrus non-aligned worldview and Delhis refusal to support the US in several key international situations through the 1960s that resulted in there being no nuclear agreement between the two countries until the 123 agreement.
The Times also quoted Indira Gandhi, in one of her letters to then-US President Lyndon B Johnson from May 12, 1966, where she described the extent of hostile opposition she faced. daily times monitor
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan