Former US secretary of state says in his e-book that Washington’s well timed intervention prevented an escalation.
India and Pakistan got here near a nuclear battle in 2019 and Washington’s intervention prevented an escalation, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says in his new memoir.
This occurred in February 2019 after New Delhi broke precedent by launching air raids inside Pakistani territory after blaming an armed group there for a suicide bombing that killed 41 Indian paramilitary troopers within the flashpoint Kashmir area. In response to the assault, Islamabad shot down an Indian warplane, capturing the pilot.
“I don't suppose the world correctly is aware of simply how shut the India-Pakistan rivalry got here to spilling over right into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019,” Pompeo claimed in By no means Give an Inch, his memoir printed on Tuesday of his time as Donald Trump’s high diplomat and earlier as CIA chief.
Pompeo, who was in Hanoi, Vietnam, for a summit between Trump and North Korean chief Kim Jong Un, mentioned he was woke up to talk along with his then-Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj.
“He believed the Pakistanis had begun to arrange their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he knowledgeable me, was considering its personal escalation,” Pompeo wrote.
“I requested him to do nothing and provides us a minute to type issues out,” Pompeo mentioned.
Pompeo said that he instantly started working with then-Nationwide Safety Advisor John Bolton, who was additionally in Hanoi and spoke to “the precise chief of Pakistan”, then-army chief Normal Qamar Javed Bajwa.
“As one would possibly count on, he believed the Indians had been making ready their nuclear weapons for deployment. It took us just a few hours – and remarkably good work by our groups on the bottom in New Delhi and Islamabad – to persuade either side that the opposite was not making ready for nuclear battle,” he added.
“No different nation might have performed what we did that night time to keep away from a horrible consequence,” Pompeo wrote.
Pakistan and India are two of only some nations with nuclear weapons.
In 1974, India grew to become the primary nation within the area to amass nuclear weapons, encouraging Islamabad to comply with swimsuit. Within the Nineteen Eighties, when it was an ally of the US within the first Afghan battle in opposition to the collapsing Soviet Union, Pakistan quietly developed its personal nuclear capability.
In response to the Stockholm Worldwide Peace Analysis Institute, India presently possesses between 80 and 100 nuclear warheads, whereas Pakistan holds between 90 and 110.
In the meantime, a lot of worldwide suppose tanks anticipate Islamabad’s nuclear stockpile will surpass 200 nuclear weapons inside the subsequent 5 years.
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