Abdul Sattar, 2007

As I noted here, a lot of PAEC folks made informative statements at the 2007 Memorial Reference for Munir Ahmad Khan. This time, the words are from former Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar:

During the early 1980s, there was an imminent threat of an Indian and Israeli attack on Kahuta and PINSTECH. Hectic discussions used to take place in the Foreign Office in Islamabad over this issue each day. This was during 1983-84 and the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had ordered to prepare contingency plans for an attack on the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta and the reprocessing plant at PINSTECH. She had also ordered a file to be prepared with the title ‘Attack on Kahuta”. 

”In the fall of 1983, Munir Ahmed Khan met with Raja Ramanna , the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna, where both were attending an IAEA meeting. Concerned by an imminent attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, Munir Ahmed Khan told Ramanna ‘ if such an attack took place against Kahuta or PINSTECH, it would release very little radioactivity because we had only a small enrichment plant and a small research reactor at these places. However, Pakistan would assume that such an attack came from India and would be forced to respond”. 

”Munir Khan told his Indian counterpart that he was simply making technical points and was not speaking in an fficial capacity, but went on to remind Ramanna that a Pakistani counter attack on Trombay would be huge and could release massive amounts of radiation to a large populated area causing a disaster. Under the circumstances, it would be better that India and Pakistan should not attack each other’s facilities.”

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