The former head of American diplomacy under Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, states in a book published on Tuesday that India and Pakistan were on the verge of a nuclear confrontation in 2019 and that the United States then avoided escalation, AFP writes, quoted by Agerpres.
„I don’t think the world really realizes how the rivalry between India and Pakistan could have come so close to turning into a nuclear confrontation in February 2019,” Pompeo writes in his book, Never Give an Inch.
India launched airstrikes in February 2019 in Pakistani territory in retaliation for a suicide bombing that killed 41 Indian paramilitaries in Kashmir. Pakistan retaliated by shooting down an Indian plane and capturing the pilot.
Pompeo, who was in Hanoi for a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, says he was awakened by an urgent phone call from a senior Indian official.
„He believed that the Pakistanis had started preparing their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, was studying its own response”, writes the one who also led the CIA during Donald Trump’s term.
„I asked him not to do anything and to give us a minute to try to see everything clearly,” he continued.
Mike Pompeo then writes that American diplomats managed to convince both the Indians and the Pakistanis that neither country was preparing for a nuclear attack.
„No other country could have done what we did that night to avoid a horrible outcome,” he added.
Mike Pompeo says he has spoken to „the real leader of Pakistan,” referring to Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa.
At that time, the head of American diplomacy publicly supported India’s right to self-defense.
India and then Pakistan tested atomic bombs in 1998, prompting then US President Bill Clinton to call Kashmir „the most dangerous place in the world”.
Kashmir is a Himalayan region claimed by India and Pakistan.
It has been the scene of several wars for its control since the partition of the British Indian Empire in 1947, AFP writes.
Agerpres
