Veteran diplomat Satinder Kumar Lambah’s memoir — In Pursuit of Peace: India-Pakistan Relations Under Six Prime Ministers — a Penguin Random House India publication, was launched posthumously by his wife, Nina Lambah in April 2023. The former ambassador passed away in June 2022. In this book, he draws his vivid experiences as the Special Envoy of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to steer backchannel talks in Pakistan while managing the relationship with Afghanistan under the former republic government. He was also Special Representative for Afghanistan under PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee.   


You can read below a chapter from the book, which talks about how India assessed the nuclear threat from Pakistan and responded to it. The chapter discusses among other things the role of then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in dealing with the threat, and how he took steps to strengthen India's nuclear deterrent. 


Pakistan's Nuclear Programme


Narasimha Rao took interest in Pakistan’s nuclear programme. On different occasions, we discussed both its commencement and ongoing developments. Pakistan took the decision to go nuclear in January 1972, at a meeting convened by Bhutto, of officials and nuclear scientists, in Multan. Mobilization of resources started thereafter. Negotiations with France for a plutonium reprocessing plant in 1973 ended in an agreement in March 1976. In May 1972, the Pakistani Metallurgist, Dr A.Q. Khan, joined Physics Dynamics Research Laboratory (in Dutch FDO), a subsidiary of Almelo Enrichment Consortium, a Dutch company, and returned to Pakistan in 1975 after obtaining details of the gas centrifuge enrichment process and a list of supplier firms in Europe for various assemblies. 


In 1975, the ‘Special Works Organization’ was established in Islamabad under then Brig. Anees Ali Saeed, which began ordering items required for the nuclear programme through Pakistani embassies in Paris and Brussels, as also through various fictitious firms established for this purpose in West Germany and elsewhere in Europe. This was later confirmed in a BBC documentary. The pace and scope of both overt and covert activities of Pakistan from 1972 onwards made amply clear the hollowness of western propaganda that India’s peaceful explosion in 1974 instigated Pakistan to go nuclear. 


The Nuclear Programme not only continued unabated under President Ziaul Haq but later assumed a new priority. Pakistan’s secret purchases since 1977, though denied by President Zia and his government, were well known. In addition to acquisition of nuclear technology information from Almelo in Holland, Pakistan obtained equipment and raw materials for a huge gas centrifuge at Kahuta (near Islamabad), a uranium fuel fabrication plant near Karachi and two pilot plants outside Rawalpindi. These plants produced plutonium 239 and uranium 235—essential ingredients for nuclear weapons or explosive devices. In 1981, the Canadian government intercepted supplies from a Canadian supplier of Pakistani origin. The supplies had reached Canada from the USA and were detected when they were being sent to Pakistan through a Middle Eastern country. In October 1981, the American customs detected a supply of zirconium, used to provide outer covering for fuel rods, used in the Karachi reactor. In 1982, there were credible reports of a Pakistan test in a Chinese location. 


I told PM Narasimha Rao that I had written in my handover report as deputy chief of mission in Islamabad in September 1982 that Pakistan conceives its nuclear programme to subserve its strategic military interests, which would necessitate an explosion. It would, however, take time for it to suit both its internal and external compulsions. Pakistan preferred to wait until acquisition of military equipment from the USA, particularly the F-16 planes. He inquired whether this assessment had been shared with others. When I responded that I doubted it had been read by more than two people, he smiled and asked me to continue. 


On New Year’s Day in 1983, President Ziaul Haq said, ‘Pakistan is not making a bomb,’ and later on 6 September, he reiterated, ‘Pakistan will not conduct such a test even for peaceful purposes.’ On 27 February 1985, he declared that Pakistan’s nuclear project was for meeting its energy shortage. Around the same time, A.Q. Khan made his disclosures to Kuldip Nayar. A change was indicated in President Zia’s public statement on 27 November 1987, ‘Pakistan does possess the requisite technology to make an atom bomb but would not do so nor has it already made one.’ On 22 May 1989, the civilian government under PM Benazir Bhutto approved a twenty-year plan for developing nuclear power generation. On 5 June 1989, Benazir Bhutto announced, ‘Pakistan will not allow anyone to inspect its nuclear installations.’ This was repeated by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on 25 August 1991 when he declared, ‘We will not accept any conditions about our nuclear programmes.’ 



I had kept the prime minister informed both about public statements and other information regarding Pakistan’s nuclear programme. On 7 February 1992, foreign secretary, Shahryar Khan, in an interview to the editorial board of the Washington Post, acknowledged that Pakistan possessed elements which, if put together, could become a nuclear device. He confirmed that these elements included potential weapon cores fashioned from highly enriched uranium. Prime Minister Sharif, in an interview to CNN on 13 January 1993, said that there was no gainsaying the fact that Pakistan had achieved nuclear capability. He added, ‘We are developing it for peaceful purposes, and we have no intention of making a nuclear device.’ Significantly, on 10 March 1993, Pakistan’s nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan said that the armed forces were kept in the dark about Pakistan’s nuclear programme for the first three years of its existence. He said President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, in different capacities, was the head of the programme since its inception in 1976 and had to face ‘unbearable external pressure’ on account of his role in the nuclear programme. Interestingly, on 23 July 1993, in an interview to Awaz International of London, former army chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg claimed that Pakistan had crossed the nuclear line in 1987. He was quoted as saying, ‘Pakistan carried out the test in cold laboratory conditions and it was very successful. No one should have any doubt about that.’ Five days later, on 28 July, a Pakistan foreign office spokesman denied that Pakistan had tested any nuclear device in 1987 and added that Gen. Aslam Beg had already clarified that he had been misquoted. Much later, when I asked Gen. Aslam Beg at a social function about his statement, he laughingly said generals make statements, diplomats make both statements and denials. On 30 July 1993, at a press conference in Washington, following his meetings with U.S. vice president Al Gore, Pakistan caretaker prime minister Moeen Qureshi said, ‘It is correct that so far as nuclear capacity is concerned, Pakistan has the technical capacity to prepare a nuclear facility. It is not our intention to move to any next stage or acquire nuclear weapons. In other words, we have the capacity to make one within a reasonable period of time.’ It is evident that the Pakistan foreign office clarification two days earlier was made keeping the meeting with the U.S. vice president in mind. Immediately after her election and taking over as prime minister for the second time, Benazir Bhutto, in her first broadcast on 20 October 1993, said, ‘We will safeguard the nuclear programme of Pakistan and will not allow any damage to our national integrity.’ In a policy statement to the National Assembly on 28 November 1993, Foreign Minister Sardar Asif Ali said that Pakistan had acquired some technical capability in the nuclear field; however, a political decision had been taken at the highest level to use the technical capability for peaceful purposes only and not to produce nuclear weapons. He also stated that Pakistan would, under no circumstances, roll back its peaceful nuclear programme. A few days later on 11 December 1993, in an article in the government-controlled Pakistan Times, former army chief Gen. Aslam Beg repeated that Pakistan had acquired nuclear capabilities in 1987. He added that during a meeting in the presidency in January 1989, attended by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Prime Minister Bhutto and Army Chief Aslam Beg, the unanimous assessment was that Pakistan had acquired the nuclear capability vitally needed for its security and that it had significantly added to its defensive strength by achieving a ‘credible deterrence’. Shortly thereafter, on 10 January 1994, PM Bhutto, in an interview to the Associated Press of America, stated that Pakistan needed a nuclear deterrent against India. On 7 April 1994, at an impromptu press conference in the premises of the Pakistan National Assembly, on the eve of the visit to Pakistan of U.S. deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, PM Bhutto, in response to a question whether Pakistan was ready for ‘verifiable capping’, said, ‘We believe in non-proliferation and we will consider every proposal presented to us but it is clear that we are not going to open our installations unilaterally as there is a national consensus on this issue.’ Ten days later in the course of a private visit to Pakistan, former caretaker PM Moeen Qureshi said at a news conference in Islamabad that Pakistan’s nuclear programme had been ‘capped four years ago’, adding, ‘Let us not add to our arsenal of nuclear weapons.’ In reply to a separate query from the correspondent of the Dawn as to whether Pakistan actually had a nuclear arsenal, Moeen Qureshi said, ‘Yes, we have something.’ PM Rao was kept fully informed of these developments and wanted additional information about M-11 missiles which was given separately to him. 


India had always been carefully monitoring reports about China’s assistance to Pakistan in the nuclear field. Rao, when he was minister of external affairs, as early as 30 March 1984, made a statement in the Lok Sabha expressing concern on Sino–Pakistan nuclear collaboration. He extensively quoted from statements of senior U.S. functionaries, who had testified that China had transferred sensitive nuclear weapon design information to Pakistan. 


As it emerged later, Narasimha Rao, who I found always wanted me to inform him of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, had been paying close attention to India’s nuclear programme. Arunachalam, the head of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had separately informed him in 1991 that Pakistan had the capability to produce ten atomic bombs. There had been reports about India conducting nuclear tests during Prime Minister Rao’s tenure. It is mentioned in Rao’s biography, that ‘two days after Narasimha Rao’s body was cremated in 2004, an emotional Atal Bihari Vajpayee, paying his old friend a startling tribute, stated that Rao was the “true father” of India’s nuclear program. Vajpayee said that in May 1996, a few days after he had succeeded Rao as prime minister, Rao told him, “Samagri tayyar hai”, (the ingredients are ready). “You can go ahead, Rao told me that the bomb was ready. I only exploded it.”’ 


Sitapati, an Indian journalist and author, later writes, 


The BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee took over as prime minister on 16 May 1996. Narasimha Rao, Abdul Kalam and R. Chidambaram went to meet the new prime minister ‘so that’, in Kalam’s telling, ‘the smooth takeover of such a very important programme can take place’. Vajpayee’s revelations of 2004 make clear what was discussed. Immediately afterwards, Vajpayee ordered nuclear tests, but rescinded that order when it was clear that his government would not last. In 1998, back as prime minister for the second time, Vajpayee was able to finally ‘go ahead’ and explode. 



This excerpt is part of the book, ‘In Pursuit Of Peace’, by Satinder Kumar Lambah, and has been published with permission from Penguin.