National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon on Tuesday said that India had faced explicit or implicit threat from global powers  at least thrice before Pokhran-II in 1998  to change its "behaviour", but that has stopped since the country became a nuclear weapons state.

Menon's revelation came without further elaboration. He was addressing the National Outreach Conference on Global Nuclear Disarmament held here on Tuesday. It was organised by the Indian Council of World Affairs and PM's informal group on Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan.

"On at least three occasions before 1998 other powers used explicit or implicit threat of nuclear weapons to try and change India's behaviour," he said, adding that global powers didn't succeed in changing India's behaviour because of the "hard-headed leadership we were fortunate to have". "Since we became a declared nuclear weapons state in 1998 we have not faced such threats," Menon said. He added, "The possession of nuclear weapons has, empirically speaking, deterred others from attempting nuclear coercion or blackmail against India."

Noting that nuclear weapons make a contribution to the country's security in an uncertain and anarchic world, he stressed that from the very beginning India has made it clear that its nuclear weapons were for deterrence and not "war fighting weapons".

Without naming Pakistan, he said that unlike certain other nuclear weapon states, India's weapons are not meant to redress a military imbalance or to some perceived inferiority in conventional military terms or to serve some tactical or operational military need on the battlefield.

Menon said that having nuclear weapons added weight to India's argument for universal disarmament on the global fora. "We spent 24 years after our first peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974 urging and working for universal nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-free world," he said.

Menon said India argued for a nuclear weapons-free world out of conviction that such a scenario would enhance national security and that of the rest of the world. "But sadly this was a conviction and view that obtained much lip sympathy and verbal support but was actually flouted in practice with

increasing impunity by others. And when the division of the world into nuclear weapon haves and have-nots was sought to be made permanent in the 90s it became clear that possession of nuclear weapons was necessary if our attempts to promote a nuclear weapon-free world were to be taken seriously and have some effect," he said.

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, who, too, addressed the conference, said that nuclear weapons today are an integral part of our national security and will remain so, pending non-discriminatory and global nuclear disarmament.

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