Thursday, August 25 2005 14:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Boston: Top advisers to President John F. Kennedy warned him in 1963 that if he pledged to defend India against any attack by communist China, the United States would likely have to use nuclear weapons to enforce the commitment, according to a newly declassified tape recording.

George Ball, Undersecretary of State in the Democratic Administration, also warned, in what today would be considered insensitive language, that using a nuclear response could subject the country to charges of racism following the twin atomic bombings in Japan that ended World War II.

"If there is a general appearance of a shift in strategy to the dependence on a nuclear defence against the Chinese in the Far East, we are going to inject into this whole world opinion the old bugaboo of being willing to use nuclear weapons against Asians when we are talking about a different kind of strategy in Europe," Ball told the President during a May 9, 1963, National Security meeting in the White House.

"This is going to create great problems with the Japanese, with all the yellow people."

A six-page summary of the top-secret meeting was released in 1996, but a tape of the conversation was made available only after it was subjected to a National Security Review based on updated federal guidelines.

In one exchange on the tape, Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is heard telling Kennedy, "Mr. President, I had hoped before we get too deeply in the India question, we take a broader look at where we are coming, the attitude we're going to maintain versus Red China. This is just one spectacular aspect of the overall problem of how to cope with Red China politically and militarily in the next decade. I would hate to think that we would fight this on the ground in a non-nuclear way."