For over 2 hrs, scientists tried to persuade me to go in for nuclear test, I said no: Deve Gowda

“The primary reason not to conduct another nuclear test was not the fear of American sanctions but because I didn’t want relations in the sub-continent to be spoilt. We wanted to improve our relations with our neighbours,” Deve Gowda said.

He added that by then, dates had been fixed for holding bilateral talks with Pakistan and he did not want anything to disrupt the process.

Incidentally, it was two years earlier, in the winter of 1995, when P V Narasimha Rao was PM that there was also talk of a nuclear test. Whether the US found out and put pressure against testing or whether Rao had no real plan to test has been the subject of much speculation, most recently last August, when Jaswant Singh claimed there was a “mole” in the Rao PMO who tipped off Washington.

Asked about the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s nuclear tests in May 1998, Deve Gowda said that came as no surprise to him. This was because, he claimed, there was “much speculation on whether the Vajpayee government would last for long” in its second term, given that its earlier stint lasted only 13 days. “As there was no political stability in the Vajpayee government, the decision to conduct nuclear tests was taken,” Deve Gowda said.

“There was so much euphoria (after the nuclear tests) for a week. But after Pakistan also conducted nuclear tests, both the countries came to equal status…after the decision was taken, Jagmohan made a speech in Parliament saying that all the ‘previous Prime Ministers were impotents’. I intervened and told him to take all the credit for himself and I don’t want to reveal what steps we had taken,” Deve Gowda said.

However, he said he had high regard for Vajpayee for having successfully run a non-Congress government for six years. Incidentally, in Karnataka, his party runs as a coalition government with the BJP, the genesis of which he claims was “against his wishes”.

Deve Gowda said there was pressure from the US to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) with the Clinton Administration sending former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to persuade him. “But there was no question of me yielding to the pressure of Henry Kissinger nor to a five-member Senate delegation that held talks with me on this,” he said.

On the Indo-US nuclear deal, the former prime minister is guarded. He said it’s too early to comment as the 123 bilateral agreement is yet to be negotiated.