INDIRA GANDHI to HENRY KISSINGER: "The Northwest Frontier Province belongs to India and the only way to get there is through the Punjab"

Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten |  Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | RUPEE NEWS | January 2nd, 2008 |

1975 KISSINGER-BHUTTO MEETING

What impresses me in reading the declassified transcript (see summary and link below) of the Bhutto-Kissinger meeting is the profound knowledge that Z.A. Bhutto had about world events and how he was able to plant seeds in the mind of Henry Kissinger about the dangers from India and the USSR.

In reading through the declassified documents published by the Government of the USA there are a few interesting comments that Mr. Henry Kissinger made about Pakistan. It is after this meeting and in a letter afterwards that threats were made to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Kissinger also informed Bhutto about the fact that he believed that India wanted to attack Pakistan.

“I have to doubt in my mind that India will have another go at Pakistan”…He then said…that Indira Gandhi had had informed him that she considered the North West Frontier Provinces as part of India and the only way to them is through the Punjab.

This is the daughter of Nehru and the current Congress Party. Those who want detente with India should consider the following statement in the light of the 4 Indian consulates in Afghanistan and the mayhem that is being rained from across the border.

“The The Northwest Frontier Province belongs to us and the only way to get there is through the Punjab”

Here is the summary of the document.

“Document 20: Memorandum of Conversation, “The Secretary’s Meeting with Prime Minister Bhutto,” 26 February 1976, 7:00 p.m., The Waldorf Towers, Manhattan, Secret/Nodis

U.S. relations with Pakistan were a major element in Kissinger’s first volume of memoirs but the relationship seldom surfaces in the third volume, Years of Renewal, probably because there was no great crisis during the period covered by the volume. Since the Indian-Pakistan war in late 1971 a “tilt” toward Pakistan had been a hallmark of Nixon/Kissinger diplomacy and Kissinger sustained it under the Ford administration. Sharing with Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hostility toward the government of Indira Gandhi, Kissinger speculated that if the latter had another “go” at Pakistan, the Soviets would benefit from changes in the regional balance of power. Nevertheless, differences between Bhutto and Kissinger were evident.

While Bhutto argued that U.S. détente policy gave the Soviets an opportunity to “strike in various places,” Kissinger strongly defended the policy as a strategy to “moderate” the competition with the Soviets as well as weaken the peace movement at home and communist movements abroad. The problem, Kissinger argued, was not détente but a “collapse of executive authority” preventing executive officials from doing their “duty … to maintain an equilibrium” internationally. Unlike right-wing critics of détente, Kissinger was not worried about a Soviet nuclear first-strike because of the odds against staging a successful one. While strategic weapons were important for deterrence, he stated that tactical nuclear weapons could be useful in a crisis. He was strongly interested in teaching the Cubans a “lesson” because of their successful intervention in Angola.

One problem that was becoming difficult for U.S.-Pakistan relations was Pakistan’s interest in developing a nuclear capability. Kissinger had been skeptical over how much of a national interest the United States had in leading an effort to curb proliferation but he became more worried in the wake of the Indian test. To Bhutto, he expressed concern about Pakistan’s dealings with the French to secure reprocessing technology: “what concerns us is how reprocessing facilities are used at a certain point.” After the Pakistanis cited earlier assurances on safeguards for nuclear facilities, Kissinger said he was concerned about “realities” not “words”; safeguarded deals were not enough because one side could break an agreement. While Bhutto declared that “We don’t want to explode a bomb,” it was evident that he thought that Pakistan should continue its nuclear development programs: “an embryonic capability … may prove helpful” in getting India to accept a nuclear-free zone.

The 1976 election overshadowed this conversation, which showed that Kissinger did not believe that the Democrats could run successfully against the Ford administration’s record: “I don’t see the Democrats winning since they have neither foreign policy nor domestic issues to campaign on.”

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Notes 1. See document 19.2. “Nodis” or “No Distribution” without permission. 3. For Kissinger’s account of the meeting, see White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 278-282. For the campaign of threats, see William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, “Nixon’s Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test, October 1969,” Cold War History, January 2003, and Kimball, The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 11-21.4. For Kissinger’s account of Cambodia (which does not mention this meeting), see White House Years, 457-520. For an up-to-date account of U.S. policy during this period, see Kenton Clymer, The United States and Cambodia, 1969-2000: A Troubled Relationship(New York: Routledge, 2004), 24-42.5. For Kissinger’s account of the Jordanian crisis, see White House Years, 594-631; this meeting is mentioned on page 607. For an overview of crises during September 1970, see Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography(New York, Simon & Schuster, 1992), 285-315.6. Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation, 2nd edition (Washington, DC, Brookings Institution, 1994), 98.7. “XGDS”: exclude from general declassification schedule.8. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr., Patron Saint of the Conservatives(New York, Simon and Schuster, 1988), 300-307 and 330-332.9. For Kissinger’s version, see White House Years, at 1304. For a detailed account of the Kissinger-Zhou talks, see William Burr, “The Complexities of Rapprochement,” in Academic Committee of Beijing Forum at Peking University, eds., The Harmony and Prosperity of Civilizations: Selected Papers of Bejing Forum (2004) (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2005), 190-219.

10. For Kissinger’s account of the meeting, see White House Years, 1326-1327.

11. For Kissinger’s brief account of the discussion, see White House Years, 1426.

12. Kimball, The Vietnam War Files, 275.

13. Kissinger discusses this meeting with Brezhnev in Years of Upheaval, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 1022.

14. For Kissinger’s account of the meeting without the frank evaluation of détente, see Years of Upheaval, 1042-1043.

15. For U.S. policy toward Cambodia during and after the fall of Lon Nol, see Clymer, The United States and Cambodia, 1969-2000, 86-112.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK%202-26-76.pdf

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