The story of Pakistan's nuclear program

This is October Sun Chon.
On the same day when the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Bogra met US President Eisenhower in the White House and
Pakistan joined America's Atom for Peace project in the field of nuclear energy. The Atomic Energy Commission was announced 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 for the production of weapons.
I remember that at that time there was a lot of discussion on this issue in Pakistan,
because according to many observers, the main purpose of President Eisenhower's Atomic for Peace plan was to deprive all other countries of the world from the capability of nuclear weapons except the United States.
They were to be banned from producing nuclear weapons.
Just as today the CTBT is being used as a weapon to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
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 that, the period of closeness and cooperation between the United States and Pakistan in the military,
political and economic fields began.
In return for economic assistance, military bases were established on the territory of Pakistan and their military advisors were sent to Pakistan.
Along with this, the United States appointed its expert in the Pakistan Planning Commission to prepare the five-year economic plan of Pakistan.
Thus America had taken Pakistan completely under its control.
The result of the full grasp of America's influence on Pakistan in this way was that the leadership of Pakistan 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.
These news started coming in the sixties
The nuclear program has spanned four decades
The nuclear program has spanned four decades
It was said that India is rapidly moving towards nuclear tests,
but despite this, Pakistan's leadership has flatly refused to step into the field of nuclear weapons.
I was there when Dzulfiqar Ali Bhutto,
leading a condolence delegation from Pakistan, came to Delhi on the death of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 64.
I remember having a long meeting with him on this occasion to discuss the progress in the nuclear energy sector in India and when I asked him what Pakistan was doing to get nuclear capability, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto told me.
Taking the measure that I will not divulge this secret, he revealed that in 1963 he had proposed in the cabinet that Pakistan should start a program to develop nuclear weapons,
but President Ayub Khan and his The pro-American Finance Minister Mohammad Shoaib and other ministers rejected his proposal outright and made a clear decision that Pakistan would not acquire nuclear weapons capability.
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, Dr. Abdul Salam,
President Ayub's top scientific advisor, and MM Ahmed, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, headed by the US.

There is no doubt that it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who came to power in 1971 after Pakistan was split in two as a result of the Bangladesh war,
who initiated the plan to make Pakistan a nuclear power.
Immediately after taking office as President, Bhutto made a whirlwind tour of Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria.
I was with him on this visit. 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 in Damascus,
he told Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad that his visit was the beginning of the journey of renaissance and that the Islamic world can acquire nuclear power with the expertise of Pakistan and the wealth of Muslim countries. .

Immediately after this visit, he officially launched Pakistan's program to acquire nuclear weapons capability in 1973, and in this regard,
he changed the head of the Atomic Energy Commission and dismissed the senior scientific advisor,
Dr. Abdus Salam, from Holland.
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was invited to Pakistan.
He persuaded the French government to renew an old offer to build a nuclear reprocessing plant for Pakistan's nuclear program.
The United States did not like the speed with which Bhutto was moving ahead with the nuclear program,
and then Secretary of State Kissinger openly threatened that if Bhutto insisted on the nuclear reprocessing plant plan, he would not stay. .
And finally, in the 1970s, Bhutto was not only ousted from power, but in the 1990s, he was crucified.
But the research work on the nuclear capability program that Bhutto had started continued.
And Pakistani scientists at the Kahota laboratory, which started work on enrichment of UNM in the year four, achieved its first success in the year seventy-eight and
by the year eighty-two they were able to enrich it to ninety percent.
According to Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear scientists had acquired the ability to develop a nuclear bomb in 1984 and he asked General Ziaul Haq to openly announce Pakistan's determination to develop a nuclear bomb,
but His pro-American foreign minister and other ministers strongly opposed him.
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.