India, Nov. 8 -- Former CIA officer Richard Barlow has claimed that a proposed joint "covert operation" by India and Israel to bomb Pakistan's Kahuta nuclear facility in the early 1980s could have "solved a lot of problems" but the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi "did not approve" of it.

He dubbed her decision a "shame". He was speaking in an interview with news agency ANI, when he said that the operation was intended to halt Islamabad's atomic ambitions.

Richard Barlow, who served as a counterproliferation officer in the CIA during Pakistan's clandestine nuclear development, said he had heard about the plan in intelligence circles but was not directly involved. "I heard about it at some point. But I didn't get my teeth into it becaus...