HVK Archives: PM attends defence meeting to review strategy
PM attends defence meeting to review strategy - The Times of India
Dinesh Kumar
()
May 13, 1998
Title: PM attends defence meeting to review strategy
Author: Dinesh Kumar
Publication: The Times of India
Date: May 13, 1998
A day after the testing, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
carried out a comprehensive defence review when he took the
unprecedented step of attending defence minister Fernandes'
weekly meeting at the latter's South Block office here on
Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Indian military establishment is learnt to have
carried out a detailed cost-benefit analysis of any repercussions
that could fall out from Monday's testing of three nuclear
devices at Pokhran, highly placed sources here said.
The high-level meeting, which lasted about 45 minutes, was
attended by the three service ,chiefs, Defence Research and
'Development Organisation (DRDO) chief A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the
cabinet secretary, foreign secretary, defence secretary, and the
prime minister's principal secretary. There were no details
forthcoming about the meeting. Sources, however, said that the
three service chiefs had been informed in advance about the
decision to explode the three nuclear devices.
"The mood at the meeting was one of quiet euphoria," was all that
a senior official was willing to say. "Otherwise of course, it
has been a euphoric working day for all of us in the defence
ministry," said a senior official.
"A detailed study of various scenarios and possibilities had been
carried out in advance," said a senior official. "It is now
important to see what the West does, rather than what they say,"
said a senior official, adding that so far there had not been any
studied or calibrated reaction from the United States. go far
there has only been reactions from the state department spokesman
and some other officials," he said.
Defence ministry official said that it was unlikely that
Washington would revoke its recent invitation to defence minister
George Fernandes. Similarly, an invite from Washington has been
long pending for defence secretary Ajit Kumar, who is co-chairman
of the Indo-U.S. defence policy group. Air chief marshal S.K.
Sareen is currently slated to visit the U.S. in June in his
capacity as chairman chief of staff committee.
While congratulating Dr Kalam and Dr R. Chidambaram along with
their respective teams of scientists and engineers from the DRDO
and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for their "splendid job"
in his first official reaction after the testing, defence
minister George Fernandes, however, said that nuclear weapons
alone could not ensure a nation's freedom and security of its
frontiers. Nor could the armed forces by themselves.
He also expressed the hope that India would be able to pursue
with credibility and greater conviction in "our long-time
campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons".
Stating that the entire nation was proud of the achievement in
showing to the world that India was second to none in the area of
nuclear science and technology and for demonstrating its
capability for a weaponised nuclear programme, Mr Fernandes,
however, pointed to what he described as "hard options" lying
ahead of us.
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