The chemistry between Nixon and Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan was entirely different. Recorded after President Nixon met Yahya Khan in October 1970, on the 25th Anniversary of the UN, a Top Secret Memorandum of Conversation states: “Yahya is tough, direct and with a good sense of humour. He talks in a very clipped way, is a splendid product of Sandhurst and affects a sort of social naïveté but is probably much more complicated than this.” (Yahya was, in fact, commissioned from the Indian Military Academy Dehra Dun).
In 1969, on his departure from Delhi after breakfast, President Nixon flew to Lahore and was warmly welcomed. Yahya Khan wanted to present Nixon with something memorable and Major General Syed Shahid Hamid suggested a Gandhara sculpture dating back 2,000 years. The idea appealed to President Yahya and a sculpture was purchased from Taxila, mounted and handed over to the President’s staff. Yahya Khan later said that Nixon was overwhelmed with the gift. Few know that during Nixon’s ‘Wilderness Years’ when he held no official post, he had paid a private visit to Pakistan in 1967. Nixon was then a senior partner in a law firms in New York. His law firm represented one of the US soft drink giants: Pepsi Cola, and the visit to Pakistan may have had something to do with this.
Nixon stayed at the State Guest House which in those days was the old residence of Mohn Singh at Rawalpindi. He was escorted to Taxila, a half hour drive from Islamabad and his first stop was the museum. The curator showed him some of the 4,000 artefacts on display, including stone, stucco, terracotta sculptures and ornaments of silver, gold and semiprecious stones. Nixon was also given a tour of the Greco-Bactrian city of Sirkap.