Pakistan's nuclear weapons development was in response to the loss of East Pakistan in 1971's Bangladesh Liberation War. Bhutto called a meeting of senior scientists and engineers on 20 January 1972, in Multan, which came to known as "Multan meeting". Bhutto was the main architect of this programme, and it was here that Bhutto orchestrated the nuclear weapons programme and rallied Pakistan's academic scientists to build an atomic bomb in three years for national survival.