Gandhi’s ‘No’ to A-Weapons Seen Softening

Amid reports that Pakistan continues to seek nuclear weapons capability and may have tested a triggering device, the government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is under increasing pressure here to resume India’s nuclear weapons program, which has been dormant for more than 10 years, Indian defense experts and Western diplomatic sources said.

In recent statements, Gandhi appears to have softened his formerly intransigent position against development of an Indian nuclear weapons system. Meanwhile, the so-called Indian “bomb lobby”--made up of intellectuals, defense analysts and senior military officers--has mounted an intense campaign for India to restart its program. The program was suspended in 1974, following a successful detonation in the Rajasthan Desert.

“It is regrettable that the Indian government has done nothing since 1974--11 years wasted,” said Inder Malhotra, New Delhi editor of the Times of India, who has been crusading for an Indian nuclear program since 1964, when China exploded its first nuclear device.

“It is not that there has been a change in public attitude,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a former Defense Ministry adviser and now director of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses. “Public opinion polls have shown there has always been urban population supporting India’s exercising the nuclear option. It is the government that has always been the restraining influence.”

Shunned Arms Race

Under Indian Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai, the Indian position was clear: India would not be drawn into a nuclear arms race even if Pakistan, India’s enemy in three wars, developed a bomb.

“The problem of Pakistan having a bomb,” Indira Gandhi told the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, in August, 1984, “does not make a great deal of difference. China has bombs. Many other countries have bombs, and any of those bombs can destroy.”

When he first came to office, Rajiv Gandhi appeared to mirror his mother’s policies, making India unique in the world in having proven nuclear capability but not developing it. “Just the fact that Pakistan made a bomb would not make us change our policies,” he said in a February interview with The Times.

In recent weeks, however, his stand appears to have eroded, coinciding with reports in the U.S. press that Pakistan has ignored American pressures to stop its nuclear weapons project. ABC-TV, in particular, has reported that Pakistani scientists have successfully tested a krytron trigger mechanism.

‘Never’ to ‘Perhaps’

“The trend of his statements does seem to indicate that he is at least somewhat more willing to consider the nuclear option,” said one Western diplomatic source here.

Indian journalist A.G. Noorani has called it a “shift from ‘never’ to ‘perhaps.’ ” The first indication of the shift, Noorani contends, came in a May speech before an Indian National Congress Party meeting when Gandhi said the government would “look into various aspects of this question and see what action we should take” if Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons.

In June, Gandhi told a reporter for the French newspaper Le Monde: “If we should take the decision to become one (a nuclear power), it would be a matter of a few weeks or a few months.”

In an interview published this week in a Bombay newspaper, Gandhi said: “We will have to wait until it comes to the crunch. But I am very much against having a bomb. I don’t think it will serve any purpose. At the same time, having said that, we have to look after our national security. I mean, that cannot be compromised.”

Urges U.S. Pressure

In an interview with the newspaper Blitz and in several speeches this week in the southern India state of Madras, Gandhi called on the United States to put more pressure on Pakistan, the recipient of a $3.2-billion American military and economic aid package, to halt its nuclear weapons program. In fact, some observers here feel that his rhetoric, increasingly suggestive of a renewed Indian nuclear program, is aimed more at the United States than Pakistan.

“Obviously he has more information than he is telling us,” said editor Malhotra. “His comments are aimed as much at the U.S.A. as they are at Pakistan. But in my opinion, the Pakistanis will not be deterred.”

Members of the Indian pro-nuclear weapon development lobby, in fact, are dubious of U.S. powers to persuade Pakistan to stop nuclear weapons development. They note that a complete cutoff of aid by the Jimmy Carter Administration in 1979 over the issue failed to slow the Pakistani program.

“The United States doesn’t seem to have any leverage on Pakistan and the steady advance of Pakistan towards nuclear capability,” said Subrahmanyam, one of India’s most respected defense analysts, who contends that the main advances made by Pakistan are its ability to manufacture enriched uranium of the quality used in weapons, its collaboration with China on centrifuges and the reported recent test of the krytron triggering device.

U.S. Arrested Pakistani

In February 1984, Pakistani scientists Abdul Qadeer Khan, director of the secret Pakistani nuclear research facility at Kahuta near the capital at Islamabad, announced that “nothing stands in our way technically to stop us from enriching to 90% weapons-grade uranium.”

Two months later, U.S. agents in Houston arrested Pakistani businessman Nazir Ahmed Vaid and charged him with attempting to smuggle 50 krytron switches, made only in the United States, to Pakistan.

For the past two years, it has been widely known that Chinese scientists have been assisting the Pakistanis at Kahuta. Chinese aid to Pakistan’s nuclear program has been a major block to completion of a Sino-American nuclear cooperation pact that would allow exports of nuclear reactors and other equipment to China.

Earlier this month, however, U.S. officials said the conflict had been resolved. The Chinese, they said, have withdrawn two Chinese scientists from the Kahuta facility and assured the United States that no nuclear material will be diverted to third countries, a pledge required by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Gandhi Draws Comments

Rajiv Gandhi’s recent comments have sparked reaction from Pakistan officials. “It’s a curious thing that the sharpest criticism (of the Pakistani program) comes from our Indian friends. One would have thought that the most concern would come from non-club (nuclear club) members,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan said Wednesday in Washington. “The alcoholic preaching abstinence has a very strong argument.”

Of greater concern to Indian leaders and Western diplomats, however, are recent statements attributed to Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq criticizing U.S. pressure on Pakistan and suggesting that Pakistan will give up nuclear development only when Israel does.

In an interview with the monthly Urdu-language magazine Quami Digest, Zia said that the United States, the Soviet Union, India and Israel are part of a world campaign to stop Pakistan from acquiring nuclear technology.

Bringing Israel into the equation, observers here said, once again raises the specter of the so-called “Islamic bomb” advocated by former Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who once pledged that the Pakistani people would eat grass, if necessary, in order to finance a Pakistani nuclear weapon in reaction to the Indian weapon.

Seeking money from the Arab oil states to help finance his nuclear weapons program, Bhutto said an “Islamic bomb” was necessary to counteract those in Israel and Christian countries. Israel has vowed not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East, but a former science minister has acknowledged that the country has a nuclear capability.

“I see a new hardening of his (Zia’s) position,” analyst Subrahmanyam said. “He used to link Pakistan efforts to India. But in his latest statements he has linked up with Israel.”