Agha Ibrahim Akram gave this interview in 1987.

THE TIME THE NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY DEBATE WAS GOING ON IN NEW YORK AND IN GENEVA. WHAT WAS PAKISTAN’S ROLE IN THAT AND WHAT WAS ITS FINAL CONCLUSION?

Akram:We — I don’t think it became to a very clear cut policy on the NPT for some years because we’re not quite sure of its implications for Pakistan. We became more conscious of the NPT in 1974 to which we’ll come again a little later but basically I don’t think we had given very much thought to the NPT, its implications, its pros and cons in Pakistan. We were actually — didn’t know enough about the consequences of the NPT to take a very firm decision. We took it later on in ’74 when India had the explosion but we’ll come to that a little later.

DO YOU WANT TO SAY THE MAIN REASONS FOR PAKISTAN NOT SIGNING?

Well basically our main… One main reason for not signing was that India did not sign it. If India were to sign it we would. We would now offer to India that if they will sign it we will. We’ve said let’s jointly sign the NPT. We’ve even said let’s have a special South Asian NPT. We don’t like the idea of signing the NPT because we don’t agree with the American policies or British policies. Let’s have a South Asian NPT. We didn’t sign it beca