'Pak was ready to launch air assault on India in 1998'

Islamabad, Apr 18 (PTI) Pakistan was ready to launch
a full-fledged air assault on "pre-selected targets" in India
in 1998 had New Delhi tried to disrupt its nuclear tests,
former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan reveals in a new book.

In his book titled 'Testing Times as Foreign
Minister', Khan reveals that in the event of an attack on the
test site at Chagai by India, attack by the Pakistan Air Force
would have been launched on pre-selected targets in India.

"Pakistan had information and blueprints of the Indian
nuclear projects given gratis after the 1984 attack on the
Golden Temple," The News daily quoted the book as saying.

Once the decision that Pakistan would test, Five
Punjab Sherdil left for Quetta to secure the Chagai test site.
They had been guarding the Kahuta project in the mid-80s when
there was a threat of an attack on the project by India or
Israel or a possible combination of the two, Khan says.

He says since Pakistan became a nuclear state, the
chances of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan seem
to be a very remote possibility but a localised conflict,
which is maintained within a certain threshold and does not
lead to an open war, cannot be ruled out in future. PTI