Bush and Zia discuss the Soviet war in Afghanistan, China's relations with Pakistan and the US, the status of Taiwan, and the Pakistani nuclear program.

This report, created in March 1979 by the Ministerial Group on Nuclear Non-Proliferation, explores the state of Pakistan’s nuclear program. The document also explores topics like Pakistan’s political status among its neighbors in the Arab world, as well as possible ways Pakistan could be induced to terminate its nuclear activities.

In the face of alarmists such as Arthur Hummel in the US and Anthony Parsons in the UK, the influential British analysts on the Ministerial Group on Nuclear Non-proliferation thought it unlikely that Arab countries would knowingly fund Pakistan's nuclear programme, even though it was suggested many Muslim states might welcome a co-religionist achieving the ‘ultimate technological feat’. For nations such as Saudi Arabia, relations with the West were situated as far more significant than connections with Islamabad, despite Pakistan's position as a bulwark between the Muslim world and the USSR. The group suggested enlisting Arab governments in order to put pan-Islamic pressure on Pakistan, arguing that security concerns related to India – and not a desire to equip the Muslim world with a ‘nuclear sword’ – were the nuclear programme's main drivers. Addressing Islamabad’s security issues – a constant in British and American discussions about Pakistan – represented the surest way of achieving positive results. Where the pan-Islamic issue might come into play – analysts suggested – was after any Pakistani nuclear test, where Islamabad might enlist Muslim countries to help resist Western pressure to give up ‘the first nuclear weapon to be developed in a Moslem country.'

Cable from the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan describes different responses of Pakistani government officials and foreign government diplomats in Pakistan regarding China's first nuclear weapons test.

Intelligence reports about recent visits to Beijing by Pakistani defense and science officials raised questions whether China was or would be providing nuclear aid to Pakistan. The latter was already developing close relations with China, a matter which was of great concern to U.S. policymakers, but INR analyst Thomas Thornton concluded that Pakistan was highly unlikely to seek a significant degree of Chinese nuclear assistance.

China’s stance towards India and Pakistan, and a Pakistani proposal for a nuclear-free zone in South Asia

George H.W. Bush and Zhao Ziyang discuss Sino-American relations and China's reform and opening, in addition to the situations in Korea, India, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union.

Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi, and Ambassador Raza coordinate China and Pakistan's strategies toward the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They also discuss Sino-American relations.

With nuclear proliferation a policy priority for the Jimmy Carter administration, and Pakistan already a special concern, the possibility that China and Pakistan were sharing nuclear weapons-related information began was beginning to worry US government officials. These concerns did not go away during the Reagan administration. While nuclear proliferation was not a top priority, the administration was apprehensive about the implications of the spread of nuclear capabilities and that China may have been aiding and abetting some potential proliferators by selling unsafeguarded nuclear materials.

With nuclear proliferation a policy priority for the Jimmy Carter administration, and Pakistan already a special concern, the possibility that China and Pakistan were sharing nuclear weapons-related information began was beginning to worry US government officials. They had no hard evidence--and the soft evidence that concerned them is massively excised in the December 1979 report just as Beijing and Washington were normalizing relations—so the “precise nature and extent of this cooperation is uncertain.”

A State Department telegram discussing the possible Chinese-Pakistani nuclear assistance and reports that Pakistan had acquired a nuclear weapon in October of 1985.