“The first suggestion to establish an anti-terrorism mechanism with Pakistan had come after the 1993 Mumbai blasts. But then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao turned it down,” says former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) officer B Raman in his book, The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane.

The initiative came from the CIA and Chinese external intelligence, independent of each other, offering to “organise a dialogue” between the R&AW and the ISI. “What the US was suggesting was a joint counter-terrorism mechanism similar to what Prime Minister Manmohan SIngh had agreed to during his talks with President Pervez Musharraf in Havana in September 2006,” writes Raman, recalling that the US offer came after a visit by then CIA Director James Wollsey to Islamabad to meet then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The Chinese offer came through the “liason channel” after R&AW took up the matter of AK-47s and ammunition of Chinese manufacture found after the blasts. Rao shot down both the offers and Raman quotes him as saying that “the R&AW has been having a relationship with the CIA for 25 years. It has not been able to get its cooperation in counter-terrorism. Before suggesting to us counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan, let the US first cooperate sincerely with us in counter-terrorism”. According to Rao, it would be a “dangerous illusion” to think that anything useful would emerge from a cooperation between the R&AW and the ISI.

Raman, who retired as Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat in 1994, feels Rao’s decision could have been influenced by then Foreign Secretary J N Dixit, who felt that if the Prime Minister did feel it necessary to have such a dialogue or liaison relationship, it should be the Intelligence Bureau and not the R&AW that should handle it.

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