Although Indian National Security Advisor Shiv Shanker Menon shied away from naming the countries that tried to threaten New Delhi with use of nuclear weapons on three separate occasions, the nuclear establishment here has revealed that Pakistan twice explicitly warned of using nuclear devices against India while the Americans implicitly threatened so as well during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Menon talked about nuclear blackmail at a global disarmament seminar on Tuesday. Top government sources said Pakistan warned to take first action with nuclear weapons against India in 1987 during a large scale Indian Army mobilization under then General K Sundarji for war game ‘Operation Brasstacks’ in the Rajasthan deserts.
The war game conducted from November 1986 to March 1987, saw Pakistan Army and Air Force mobilization in response by then President Zia-ul-Haq, a report in Hindustan Times said. In an interview to journalist Kuldip Nayar in January 1987, Pak nuke scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said, “Nobody can undo Pakistan… We are here to stay. Be clear that we shall use the bomb if our existence is threatened.” The warning, Indian officials say, was conveyed through diplomatic and other channels. The second time India was subjected to such leverage tactics was when then Pak PM Benazir Bhutto sent her foreign minister Lt Gen Sahabzada Yaqub Khan to India on January 21, 1990 to pressurize New Delhi on Kashmir and related issues. With the Kashmiri separatist movement at its peak, Khan told his Indian counterpart IK Gujral that “war clouds would hover over the sub-continent if timely action was not taken.” While these two threats were direct, the US under Richard Nixon administration gave India an implicit threat by moving the USS Enterprise, world’s first nuclear- powered carrier, into Bay of Bengal on December 11, 1971 during the India-Pakistan war with collapse of Dhaka being imminent. India, however, did not budge.
It is not correct to say that in 1971, India did not budge. The fact is that US govt wanted Pakistan to workout a political solution to the crises, in which Pakistan govt was not interested. USS Enterprise moved into the Bay of Bengal to warn Indra Ghandi that if Indian forces make a move toward West Pakistan, then US will prevent it by force and this move really saved the remaining Pakistan in 1971.
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