It was October 1954.
On the very day when the Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Bogra met US President Eisenhower in the White House and Pakistan joined the US Atom for Peace project in the field of nuclear energy.
It announced the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission for research and development.
This was the beginning of Pakistan's nuclear program or actually it was a pledge by Pakistan that it would not use nuclear energy to manufacture weapons.
I remember that at that time there was a lot of talk about this issue in Pakistan because according to many observers, the real goal of President Eisenhower's Atomic for Peace plan was to deprive all other countries of the world,
except the United States, of the ability to have nuclear weapons. It was to keep them and prevent them from developing nuclear weapons by banning them.
China, not Pakistan, is India's nuclear target
Why is Pakistan opening the secrets of nuclear program?
Pakistan has more nuclear bombs than India.
Pakistan's acceptance of Eisenhower's plan was frowned upon by many people in Pakistan because it was the beginning of Pakistan's surrender at the feet of America.
Soon after, the period of closeness and cooperation between the US and Pakistan in the military, political and economic fields began.
In the same year, Pakistan joined the two military agreements of the United States, 'Sento' and 'Sito', and in return for heavy military and economic aid, the United States had established military bases on the territory of Pakistan
and sent its military advisers to Pakistan, along with Pakistan. The United States appointed its experts in Pakistan's Planning Commission to prepare a five-year economic plan.
Thus America had taken Pakistan completely under its control.
The result of the full grasp of America's influence on Pakistan was that the leadership of Pakistan at that time did not even think for a moment about the development of nuclear weapons. In general, US defense contracts at the time were considered a means of countering aggression.
In the 1960s, news began to emerge that India was rapidly moving towards nuclear testing, but despite this, Pakistan's leadership flatly refused to step into the field of nuclear weapons.
I was there when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto led a condolence delegation from Pakistan to Delhi on the death of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964.
I remember that on this occasion I had a long meeting with him and discussed the progress in the nuclear energy sector in India.
When I asked him what Pakistan was doing to get nuclear capability, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took a measure of me and said that I will not reveal this secret,
revealing that in the year 1963 he had in the cabinet.
It was proposed that Pakistan should start a program to develop nuclear weapons,
but President Ayub Khan and his pro-American Finance Minister Muhammad Shoaib and other ministers rejected his proposal outright and decided clearly that Pakistan should not develop nuclear weapons. Will not gain the ability to weaponize.
In 1968, when President Ayub Khan visited France, I went to Paris to cover his visit.
On this occasion, French President Charles de Gaulle offered to build a nuclear reprocessing plant in Pakistan, but Ayub Khan rejected this offer.
This advice was given to him by his Chief of Staff General Yahya Khan, President Ayub's Senior Scientific Adviser Dr Abdul Salam and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission MM Ahmed.
There is no doubt that it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who came to power in 1971 after the collapse of Pakistan as a result of the Bangladesh war, and who initiated the plan to make Pakistan a nuclear power.
Soon after becoming President, Bhutto made a whirlwind tour of Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria, and I accompanied him on that trip. The visit had two main objectives.
One objective was to renew relations with Muslim countries and the other was to obtain financial support from Muslim countries for Pakistan's nuclear program.
At the end of his visit to Damascus, he told Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad that his visit was the beginning of a journey of renaissance and that the Islamic world could gain nuclear power with the expertise of Pakistan and the wealth of Muslim countries. .
Immediately after this visit, he formally launched Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability program in 1973, replacing the head of the Atomic Energy Commission and dismissing the senior scientific adviser, Dr. Abdul Salam, from Holland. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was invited to Pakistan.
For Pakistan's nuclear programme, he persuaded the French government to renew an earlier offer to build a nuclear reprocessing plant.
The United States did not like the speed with which Bhutto was advancing in the nuclear program, and the US Secretary of State of the time Kissinger openly threatened that if Bhutto insisted on the nuclear reprocessing plant plan, he would not stay. will
But the research work on the nuclear capability program that Bhutto had started continued.
Pakistani scientists started uranium enrichment in 1974 at Kahota laboratory.
His hard work paid off in 1978 and by 1982 he was able to achieve 90% enrichment.
According to Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, Pakistan's nuclear scientists had acquired the ability to develop nuclear bombs in 1984 and he asked General Ziaul Haq to openly announce Pakistan's determination to develop nuclear bombs, but they did not. The pro-American foreign minister and other ministers strongly opposed it.
Finally, when India conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, there was no choice for Pakistan to conduct nuclear tests as well and thus Pakistan also joined the ranks of nuclear powers.
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