Ex-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s book Never Give an Inch hits stores
Washington:
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed he woke up to speak to his then Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, who told him Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack following the February 2019 surgical attack on Balakot and India was preparing its own before escalating reaction.
In his latest book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, which hit stores Tuesday, Pompeo says the incident happened while he was fighting US-North Korea in Hanoi on February 27-28 -Summit was team worked overnight with both New Delhi and Islamabad to avert this crisis.
“I don’t think the world knows exactly how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to a nuclear conflagration in February 2019. The truth is I don’t exactly know the answer either; all I know is that it was too close,” Pompeo writes.
India’s warplanes bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot, Pakistan, in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terrorist attack that killed 40 CRPF-Jawan.
“I’ll never forget the night I was in Hanoi, Vietnam, when — as if negotiating nuclear weapons with the North Koreans wasn’t enough — India and Pakistan started turning at each other over a decades-long dispute over the northern border threaten the Kashmir region,” says Pompeo.
“After forty Indians were killed in an Islamist terrorist attack in Kashmir – likely made possible in part by Pakistan’s lax anti-terrorist policies – India responded with an airstrike on terrorists in Pakistan. The Pakistanis shot down a plane in an ensuing dogfight and held the Indian pilot captive,” he said.
“I was woken up in Hanoi to speak to my Indian counterpart. He believed the Pakistanis had started preparing their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, is considering its own escalation for a minute to clear things up (sic),” Pompeo writes in his book, which Swaraj mistakenly refers to as “he.”
“I began working with Ambassador (then National Security Advisor John) Bolton, who was with me in the tiny secure communications facility at our hotel. I reached out to the actual leader of Pakistan, (Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, with whom I had engaged many times. I told him what the Indians had told me. He said it wasn’t true,” Pompeo said.
“As might be expected, he believed that the Indians were preparing their nuclear weapons for use. It took us a few hours – and remarkably good work from our teams on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad – to convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war,” wrote the 59-year-old former top US diplomat in his book.
There was no immediate comment from the State Department on Pompeo’s claims.
“No other nation could have done what we did that night to avoid a terrible result. As with any diplomacy, the people working on the problem set are very important, at least in the short term. I was fortunate to have great team members at Space in India, none more so than Ken Juster, an incredibly capable Ambassador. Ken loves India and its people,” he said.
“Most of all, he loves the American people and works for us every day. My senior diplomat, David Hale, was also US Ambassador to Pakistan and knew our relationship with India was a priority,” Pompeo said.
“General McMaster and Admiral Philip Davidson, who headed what was later renamed the US Indo-Pacific Command, also understood the importance of India,” he said.
“Although he was often frustrated by the Indians, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer – a brilliant trade negotiator and former associate of Bob Dole, which made him a near-Kansan – was a great partner working to deepen economic ties . We all shared the view that America had to make a bold strategic effort to strengthen our ties with India and break new ground with new ideas,” Pompeo writes in his book.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated feed.)
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