Morarji Desai was ready to ‘smash’ Pakistan’s nuke ambitions

Former prime minister Morarji Desai had told the US in 1979 that if Islamabad exploded a nuclear bomb, he would act to “smash it”, a declassified US memo has revealed.

A conversation between Desai and then US ambassador to India Robert Goheen at  a one-on-one meeting in June 1979 was made public as part of a series of declassified documents on Tuesday.

Desai told Goheen that he was not interested in an agreement on non-use and non-development of weapons, the cable said. He said if Pakistan also abstained from using nuclear power, “the two pledges would be as good as a joint agreement”.

Responding to the US ambassador’s query about a prospective Indian reaction to a Pakistani weapons test, the prime minister said “if he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, he would act at [once] ‘to smash it’,” the cable said.

Pakistan finally went nuclear in 1998 after India’s second nuclear test in Pokhran.