40th President of the United States Ronald Wilson Reagan.Wikimedia Commons/Harpsichord246 Pakistani dictator general and 6th President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.Wikimedia Commons/StanMan87
The National Security Archive (NSA) declassified documents of US State Department from 1984, revealing that the then President Ronald Reagan had warned Pakistan of an attack on Pakistani facilities by Indian military as pre-emptive measure.
Reagan had conveyed the message to then Pakistani President and dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in a letter through then US Ambassador to Pakistan, Deane Roesch Hinton in 1984, The Indian Express reported.
The message, with the warning of the strike, was based on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) analysis on India's reaction to Pakistan's nuclear programme.
"Some parts of the Indian government apparently view a Pakistani nuclear threat as imminent and it is our view that a pre-emptive military strike by India is a near-term possibility," according to CIA's analysis – Monthly Warning and Forecast Meetings for July 1984.
The CIA analysis also stated a possibility of full-scale war if India attacked Pakistani nuclear sites. "An Indian attack on Pakistani nuclear facilities would almost certainly prompt retaliatory strikes against Indian nuclear facilities and probably lead to a full-scale war."
The declassified documents further revealed that Zia had written a confidential letter to Reagan on 7 November, 1984, denying any intention to manufacture any nuclear device. "Pakistan has no intention whatsoever to manufacture or explode a nuclear device."
However, the CIA's Secret Intelligence Assessment of September 1985 revealed that "Zia-ul-Haq and the Pakistani public generally as deeply committed to a nuclear weapons capability as security against India," PTI reported.
