White House tapes show Nixon sided with Pakistan over India in 1971

October 27, 2000
Web posted at: 9:52 AM HKT (0152 GMT)

WASHINGTON -- Tapes released Thursday show former U.S. President Richard Nixon had little sympathy for India while trying to mediate peace between it and Pakistan in 1971.

"The Indians put on their sanctimonious peace Ghandi-like, Christ-like attitude," Nixon told former U.S. President George Bush, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on December 8, 1971.

"(They think) 'We are the greatest and the world's biggest democracy and Pakistan is one of the most horrible dictatorships.' "

Publicly, the Nixon administration did not take sides in the India-Pakistan conflict, but the phone conversations confirm Nixon's sympathy with the Pakistanis, who he several times refers to as "the Paks." At one point, Nixon says "India's hands are not clean" and then adds "aggression on the part of a democracy is just as wrong as aggression on the part of a dictatorship."

In the tapes released by the National Archives, Bush is heard talking to Nixon in three taped telephone conversations. Bush agreed with Nixon's assessment, saying "India, in spite of its sanctimony was really the aggressor."

In the second conversation, Nixon urges Ambassador Bush to push for a cease-fire without any conditions: a position opposed to that of the Soviet Union, which was sponsoring a resolution calling for a cease-fire tied to a political solution. Nixon says "you have to have a cease-fire and then the political solution will follow."

The tapes, containing recorded telephone conversations and meetings from August-December 1971, also captured Nixon advisers such as Henry Kissinger and former speaker of the House John McCormack offering their views on the Indo-Pakistani war that ended with the emergence of Bangladesh.

"The Indians are master-psychologists," Kissinger told Nixon during a telephone conversation on January 1, 1972. "They know they have to deal with us because they are literally now in worse shape than ever."

"I guess they must be," Nixon replied in a seemingly satisfied tone.

The war between India and Pakistan broke out on December 3, 1971 after years of tense relations ever since the British-sponsored partition of 1947 which marked the end of British rule in India and the birth of Muslim-dominated Pakistan.

The 1971 war lasted 14 days and ended with the birth of a new country: Bangladesh.

But two weeks after the end of the conflict, Nixon was still reticent to endorse the new state and told Kissinger he would announce that the recognition of Bangladesh was* premature.

"And of course we have a consul in Dhaka (the capital) with a map calling it Bangladesh already," Kissinger complained to Nixon.

"Yes I know," Nixon replied with obvious irritation. "The bastard who was there before, isn't he? He's really an all-out India-lover, isn't he?"

The Indo-Pakistani war unfolded at the height of the Cold War, thus putting America and the Soviet Union on opposing sides of it.

Nixon did little in conversation to hide what side he was leaning toward.

"We (the U.S.) are doing our best to cool it," Nixon told McCormack on December 8, 1971. "The UN asked both sides to withdraw and has put some of the blame on India where it belongs for not withdrawing."

But for image-sake, Nixon told his advisers it was paramount to convince people he was neither anti-Indian nor pro-Pakistani, but instead "pro-peace."

More than 4,000 conversations totaling about 420 hours of White House tape recordings were released Thursday, the second chronological release of the Nixon tapes to date.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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