WASHINGTON, April 14: US intelligence failed to warn of India’s nuclear tests conducted in 1974 and 1998 despite tracking the country’s atomic weapons potential for nearly half a century, according to documents declassified on Thursday.

The Indian nuclear activities scrutinised by the US intelligence agents are at the core of a current controversy over President George Bush administration’s landmark civilian nuclear deal with New Delhi.

The National Security Archive, in releasing 40 secret documents covering the 1958-1998 period, said the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence groups had been monitoring and analysing Indian civilian and military nuclear energy programs since the 1950s and could have provided decision-makers with ‘far more detailed assessments’.

But the efforts ‘did not result in US intelligence analysts warning US officials of India’s nuclear tests, carried out in May 1974 and May 1998’, said the archive, based at George Washington University in Washington.

It keeps declassified US documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Following the intelligence community’s failure to provide warning of the Indian tests, the CIA appointed a panel that investigated and presented a classified report of recommendations, according to the documents.

One CIA secret paper in 1981 mentioned that ‘China — not Pakistan — is perceived as the major long-term threat to Indian security.

“This perception has propelled New Delhi to reject the (Nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty and full-scope safeguards in order to retain the nuclear weapons option,” it said.—AFP