Saga of the Bomb
By Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Dr A.Q. Khan’s disclosure on Yom e Takbeer that Pakistan scientists were ready to explode the bomb as early as 1984 reminds me of the following which I wish to share with your readers.
I, along with late Maj Muhammad Ali Shah (Retd.) – brother-in-law of late Gen Yahya, had gone to greet the General on the eve of Eid in 1984. The General was then under detention at 61 Harley Street, Rawalpindi. After a while when we got up to leave, he, in his usual jovial manner, said, “Sit down, George Washington is coming, you should meet him also.” After a while a thick bearded gentleman looking like George Washington but clad in white kurta and pajama appeared from a side door. He was the late Dr G W Chaudhry – a Bengali and former minister in Yahya’s cabinet, who had opted for Pakistan after the creation of Bangladesh. He was at that time teaching in an American University and was on a visit to Pakistan for a purpose.
He had just returned after a meeting with the late President Gen Zia ul Haq that afternoon. After the exchange of introductory pleasantries, Yahya jerking his thick eyebrows in an enigmatic gesture, asked him about the meeting. Shaking his head, G W Chaudhry murmured, “He says they don’t have it”. Yahya was visibly agitated and bawled contemptuously, “Jhoot kehta hai, munafiq!”
Intrigued by this exchange and with an urge to know what it was all about, I called on the late Yahya Khan the next day and this is what transpired.
Dr G W Chaudhry had just accidentally run into Adlai Stevenson – the then US Representative at the UN – in the UN building lobby and had asked him as to why the US government was after Pakistan’s nuclear program. Drawing him closer by holding his arm, Stevenson, according to Chaudhry had whispered, “We know it, you have it. Go and tell them to explode it. Once you blow it up we would be the one along with the world to make one hell of a hue and cry. But you would have had presented the world with a fait accompli. After about six months everything will cool down. Go and blow it up”.
G W Chaudhry had come to convey this message to Gen Zia, who had surprisingly told him that Pakistan didn’t have the device to explode!
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