After the Chinese nuclear test on 16 October 1964, Bhabha began to publicly call for building nuclear explosives. On the other hand, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru's successor, sought security guarantees from the existing nuclear powers, while declaring at the Cairo Conference of Non-aligned Nations that India's nuclear establishment was "under firm orders not to make a single experiment, not to perfect a single device which is not needed for peaceful uses of atomic energy".