The newly declassified US government documents from former President Jimmy Carter era reveal how the United States made persistent and many-sided attempts to roll back Pakistan's nuclear programme and the resistance it met from the then Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was followed by Military Dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Carter was President from 1977 to 1981 while Bhutto was in office from 1971-1977. The documents show that Pakistani nuclear weapons programme had been a source of anxiety for American policymakers ever since the late 1970s when Washington discovered that metallurgist A Q Khan had in his possession blueprints for a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility. The documents say the Carter administration tried to do what its predecessor, the (Gerald) Ford administration, had done: discourage the Pakistani nuclear programme, but the CIA and the State Department discovered belatedly in 1978 that Islamabad was moving quickly to build a gas centrifuge plant, thanks to "dual use" technology acquired by Khan and his network. The documents further disclose the U.S. government's complex but unsuccessful efforts to convince Pakistan to turn off the gas centrifuge project. Besides exerting direct pressure first on Bhutto and then on Zia, Washington lobbied key allies and China to induce them to pressurize Islamabad, but also to cooperate by halting the sale of sensitive technology to Pakistan. The publication of declassified documents comes at a time when WikiLeaks cables reveal the tensions between the US and Pakistan on key nuclear issues, including the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal and the disposal of a stockpile of weapons-grade, highly-enriched uranium. Senior US officials concluded that prospects were "poor" for stopping the Pakistani nuclear programme, within months arms controller were "scratching their heads" over how to tackle the problem. The declassified documents disclose the US government's complex but unsuccessful efforts to convince Pakistan to turn off the gas centrifuge project. Among the disclosures in the documents: ▪ U.S. requests during mid-1978 by U.S. diplomats for assurances that Pakistan would not use reprocessing technology to produce plutonium led foreign minister Agha Shahi's to insist that was a "demand that no country would accept" and that Pakistan "has the unfettered right to do what it wishes." ▪ By November 1978, U.S. government officials, aware that Pakistan was purchasing technology for a gas centrifuge enrichment facility, were developing proposals aimed at "inhibiting Pakistan" from making progress toward developing a nuclear capability. ▪ By January 1979, U.S. intelligence estimated that Pakistan was reaching the point where it "may soon acquire all the essential components" for a gas centrifuge plant. ▪ Also in January 1979, U.S. intelligence estimated that Pakistani would have a "single device" (plutonium) by 1982 and test a weapon using highly-enriched uranium [HEU] by 1983, although 1984 was "more likely". ▪ On 3 March 1979, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher spoke in "tough terms" with General Zia and Foreign Minister Shahi; the latter claimed that the U.S. was making an "ultimatum." ▪ On 23 March 1979, senior level State Department officials suggested to Secretary of State Vance possible measures to help make the "best combination" of carrots and sticks to constrain the Pakistani nuclear program; nevertheless, "prospects [were] poor" for realizing that goal. MODERATE STATE ▪ The decision in April 1979 to cut off aid to Pakistan because of its uranium enrichment program worried State Department officials, who believed that a nuclear Pakistan would be a "new and dangerous element of instability," but they wanted to maintain good relations with that country, a "moderate state" in an unstable region. ▪ During the spring of 1979, when Washington made unsuccessful attempts to frame a regional solution involving "mutual restraint" by India and Pakistan of their nuclear activities, Indian prime minister Morarji Desai declared that "if he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, he would act at [once] 'to smash it.'" ▪ In July 19799, CIA analysts speculated that the Pakistani nuclear program might receive funding from Islamic countries, including Libya, and that Pakistani might engage in nuclear cooperation, even share nuclear technology, with Saudi Arabia, Libya or Iraq. ▪ By September 1979 officials at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said that "most of us are scratching our heads" about what to do about the Pakistani nuclear program. ▪ In November 1979, ambassador Gerard C. Smith reported that when meeting with senior British, French, Dutch, and West German officials to encourage them to take tougher positions on the Pakistani nuclear program, he found "little enthusiasm to emulate our position." ▪ In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when improving relations with Pakistan became a top priority for Washington, according to CIA analysts, Pakistani officials believed that Washington was "reconciled to a Pakistani nuclear weapons capability." Pakistan's successful drive for a nuclear arsenal was perhaps the most significant frustration for the Carter administration's nonproliferation policy, the documents say. Five years before Carter's inauguration, following Pakistan's defeat in the 1971 war with India, Bhutto made a secret decision to seek nuclear weapons which he followed up in 1973 with negotiations to buy a nuclear reprocessing facility (used for producing plutonium) from a French firm. Apparently U.S. intelligence did not seriously examine the prospects for a Pakistani bomb until after India's May 1974 "peaceful nuclear explosion." In the following months, the authors of Special National Intelligence Estimate, "Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," expected Pakistan to "press ahead" with a nuclear weapons programme, which they projected as "far inferior to its prime rival, India, in terms of nuclear technology." In August 1974, US intelligence estimated that Pakistan would not have nuclear weapons before 1980 and only as long as "extensive foreign assistance" was available. Over a year later, however, a new prediction emerged: that Pakistan could produce a plutoniumfueled weapon as early as 1978, as long as it had access to a reprocessing plant. By 1978 Pakistan did not have a reprocessing plant or the bomb, they said. Nevertheless, that same year a pattern of suspicious purchases detected by British customs officials led to the discovery that Pakistan was secretly acquiring technology to produce highly-enriched uranium as an alternative path to building the bomb. The "extensive foreign assistance" postulated by the SNIE turned out to be the theft of plans for a gas centrifuge enrichment technology from the Uranium Enrichment Corporation [URENCO] in the Netherlands. The perpetrator was metallurgist Abdul Q. Khan who founded a worldwide network to acquire sensitive technology for his country's nuclear project and later for providing nuclear technology to Pakistan's friends and customers. (Note 8) The Carter administration opposed a French contract with Pakistan to sell a reprocessing plant, according to the documents. Believing that Prime Minister Bhutto might have been willing to trade away Pakistani's nuclear program in return for "significant benefits," Warren Christopher proposed a deal to President Jimmy Carter that, in part, reprised what Henry Kissinger had offered when he was Secretary of State. The idea was to offer Bhutto cash sales of advanced weapons systems, such as F-5E fighters, along with economic assistance, assured fuel supply for nuclear reactors, and financing of a French nuclear reactor. The package would have to "stand on its own feet," thus arms sales would not be so excessive as to "start an arms race with India." Carter's reaction, as evident in his marginalia, was skeptical; for example, he favored sale of the Navy's A-5 fighter jets only, opposed the proposed economic aid budget, and questioned the idea of financing a French sale. Whether Bhutto, who had said "we will eat grass" to get nuclear weapons, would have accepted such a deal is debatable, according to the documents. In any event, on 5 July, talks with him became irrelevant when the military seized power and placed Bhutto under arrest, in the wake of controversy over recent national elections, including charges of electoral rigging. General Zia became Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA).