Does being defensive mean that India is weak?
I guess India wants to avoid peccadilloes by being offensive.
Find me an original source to that article because this link takes me to a site which belongs to a Pakistani newspaper. And frankly the extract sounded as if it was a drama. I have produced neutral sources as in which dont belong to Indian sites and ergo I'm expecting the same from you.
‘If you drive us to the wall, we will use the bomb’
Sunday, November 04, 2007
- In December 1986, India launched the largest war game ever. Pakistan responded with a message of its own
The Indians had had enough. Rajiv Gandhi had a new and assertive army chief, Lieutenant General Krishnaswami Sundarji, who had been the first Indian strategist to war game a nuclear conflagration with Pakistan, in 1981. In the autumn of 1986, Sundarji recommended resorting to more forceful means to let Pakistan know New Delhi had reached its limit: a vast military exercise in Rajasthan, in which India’s tactical nuclear weapon would be manouevred into position along the border — a pot shot away from Pakistan. In December 1986, Rajiv Gandhi gave the go ahead and Sundarji launced the largest war game ever since on the subcontinent…
Zia immediately understood the message. Sundarji was viewed in Islamabad as a hawk, a general capable of persuading even a peacenik like Rajiv Gandhi to allow an exercise to become a reality… Knowing Pakistan’s armed forces were no match for India’s firepower, Zia decided to deliver a threat that would force India to back down. A.Q. Khan was to be the messenger and it should have been his finest hour. Zia asked Khan to arrange an interview that would play loudly in India, in which he would reveal just a little more of the secret work at KRL [Kahuta Research Laboratory] — in particular the state of readiness of his programme and Islamabad’s willingness to assemble and deliver a bomb should it be sufficiently provoked. But Khan had to remain ambiguous enough for Washington to continue funding Pakistan.
Khan approached Mushabid Hussain, a well-respected journalist and editor of
The Muslim, an influential and pro-government daily. Mushahid Hussain could be relied upon to be discreet. Hussain was casting around for a journalist of suitable gravitas to conduct the interview when he received a telephone from over the border in India. An old friend and syndicated columnist of
The Muslim, Kuldip Nayar, was on the line. The Indian journalist wanted a sponsor to get him over to Pakistan. Although Zia had not considered giving the story to an Indian, Nayar was exactly the kind of journalist that he needed… Torn between his cultural roots in Pakistan and the emancipation of being a Hindu living in India, Nayar had become a writer whose columns were syndicated across the subcontinent…
Nayar recalled how Mushahid Hussain had jumped at the chance to get him over to Pakistan. To his surprise, within 24 hours of the telephone call, he had a visa, a ticket and was on his way, arriving on 29 January, 1987. Hussain told Nayar he was taking him to meet A.Q. Khan. ‘I could not believe it. He was one of the most famous people in Asia and among the most infamous in India. There were two conditions: no tapes and no notes.’ Nayar consented and they drove to Khan’s house. Khan’s house was wood and stone with a sweeping veranda and a garden filled with brilliant red Dutch tulips. ‘I looked up and Khan was standing on the veranda. He waved and beckoned me up. He said, “I am a great fan of yours. I read your column regularly.”’
Henny [his wife] was waiting in the drawing room with a trolley laden with teacups and a large pineapple upside-down cake. Nayar recalled: ‘It was my favourite. I asked her how she knew. She smiled.’ The Khans were going to an awful lot of trouble to set him at ease. Nayar swung the conversation awkwardly to the subject of KRL. ‘I said that I had seen the road to Kahuta on the way in from the airport and surely the Indians have tried to get it down. Khan replied: “They have tried. But we rebuffed them. No foreigners have ever been inside.”’ Sensing he was getting nowhere, Nayar decided to rile Khan. ‘Suddenly I said, and I confess that this was a fiction, “Khan sahib, see, when I was coming over from Delhi to Islamabad I ran into Dr Raja Ramanna — I named one of the fathers of the Indian bomb. Ramanna asked, “Where are you going'” I said, “To Islamabad to meet with Dr Khan.” Ramanna said, “Don’t waste your time. They don’t have anything. No bomb, no men, no rationale.”’
Khan’s face fell. ‘This really hurt,’ Nayar recalled. He went off like a cooked mortar, banging the table with his fists and screaming, ‘“Tell them we have it. Tell them. Tell them.” I pressed on. “Khan Sahib, it is very easy to claim these things but you have not tested.” He jumped up. “You don’t have to test in the ground any more. You can test in the lab. Let me assure you, we have tested.” He was furious now. His face was purple. “We have it and we have enriched uranium. Weaponised the thing. Put it all together.” Mushahid looked dismayed. Now we were getting somewhere.’
Nayar poked and nudged. ‘I said, “If you have tested it would be a tremendous warning for India.” Khan stared at me coldly. He spoke very clearly. “Mr Nayar, if you ever drive us to the wall, we will use the bomb. You did it to us in East Bengal. We won’t waste time with conventional weapons. We will come straight out with it.”’ Nayar had his story and got out as quickly as he could…
As soon as he was back in India, Nayar called an old colleague in London, Shyam Bhatia, a journalist on the
Observer. The paper was so worried about the ramifications of Khan’s alleged statement that it spent more than a month checking out Nayar and his story. Everything inched forwards until eventually, convinced that he was telling the truth, the
Observer splashed with it, ‘Pakistan Has the A-Bomb’, on 1 March 1987, quoting Khan as saying: ‘What the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct. They told us Pakistan could never produce and they doubted my capabilities, but they now know we have it.’ Kuldip Nayar was paid a miserly £350 for his scoop which raced around the globe.
Published with the permission of Penguin Books India;
Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy;
By Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark; Penguin;
The Telegraph - Calcutta : 7days
Now you're being in a denial mode.
What?
Retaliatory is not a relative term. Neither is it ambiguous.
It is when no threshold of casus belli is clearly defined between belligerents.
