After she was deposed, Benazir took up residence with her family in Dubai. She would travel to London regularly, which is where I would see her at least once a year, occasionally for a cup of tea and at other times for lunch.

Our most memorable encounter was in Dubai in 2003 where I stopped on my way back to London from Delhi. Benazir and her three children sat around me for the meal. Nusrat Bhutto was upstairs attended by nurses. After dinner we talked and talked for hours. We laughed about our Oxford days, Benazir told me how much she had loved her father and her love for Pakistan. We also talked about the Shimla summit with Benazir telling me in particular about how unsettling she found it with Mrs Gandhi’s eyes following her around the room wherever she went.

The most extraordinary part of our conversation, which I promised never to reveal in her life time, was Benazir’s role in exporting her country’s nuclear secrets to North Korea. She had participated in the negotiations to give Pakistan’s nuclear bomb details to North Korea in exchange for missile technology from Pyongyang.

The issue, as she explained it, was to somehow convey the relevant nuclear data to North Korea without the Americans finding out. The solution in which she connived was to find an overcoat with the deepest pockets possible in which she could carry warhead designs on a series of CDs during a state visit to Pyongyang. The grateful North Koreans immediately responded by giving Pakistan the missile technology they so urgently needed in return. And nobody guessed. Indeed everyone to this day has wondered how it was possible for the information to be relayed.

... contd.