It’s been known for some years now that the United States and China helped Pakistan build up its nuclear arsenal actively or by overlooking it to purchase Islamabad’s cooperation. But recently declassified official documents reaffirm it. “There are limits on our ability to aid Pakistan because of their nuclear programme,” then US secretary of defence Harold Brown told Chinese vice-premier Deng Xiaoping at a meeting in Beijing in January 1980, as the two leaders discussed strategy on countering Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. “Pakistan has its own reasons for developing a nuclear programme. We ourselves oppose Pakistan’s effort on nuclear weapons because we believe it is meaningless to spend money on such a programme.”But Pakistan, he had added, understandingly, “as its own arguments, i.e., India has exploded a nuclear device but the world has not seemed to complain about this”.

Source: Hindustan Times December 21, 2018 17:58 UTC