‘India-Pakistan have been getting ready to nuclear warfare after Balakot airstrike, US diplomats labored to type issues out’: Mike Pompeo claims in his new e book

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted that he was roused to talk along with his then-Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, who knowledgeable him that Pakistan was making preparations for a nuclear assault within the aftermath of the Balakot surgical strike in February 2019, and that India was making preparations for an acceptable response.

Pompeo writes in his new e book, ‘Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,’ which was launched on Tuesday, that the occasion occurred whereas he was in Hanoi for the US-North Korea Summit on February 27-28, and that his group labored for 24 hrs with each New Delhi and Islamabad to mitigate the disaster.

“I do not think the world properly knows just how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019. The truth is, I don’t know precisely the answer either; I just know it was too close,” Pompeo writes.

In response to the Pulwama terror assault, India’s warplanes bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist coaching centre in Balakot, Pakistan, in February 2019. Pompeo stated hat he would always remember the night time he was in Hanoi, Vietnam, when India and Pakistan started threatening one different over a generations-long dispute over Kashmir’s northern border space.

“After an Islamist terrorist attack in Kashmir- probably enabled in part by Pakistan’s lax counterterror policies – killed forty Indians, India responded with an air strike against terrorists inside Pakistan. The Pakistanis shot down a plane in a subsequent dogfight and kept the Indian pilot prisoner,” he stated.

In the e book that was launched on Tuesday, the previous US Secretary stated, “In Hanoi, I was awakened to speak with my Indian counterpart. He believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he informed me, was contemplating its own escalation. I asked him to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out.” He additionally wrongly referred to Swaraj as ‘he’.

He talked about that he labored with Ambassador (then National Security Advisor John) Bolton, who was with him within the tiny safe communications facility at their resort. “I reached 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,” he claimed.

“As one might expect, he believed the Indians were preparing their nuclear weapons for deployment. It took us a few hours and remarkably good work by our teams on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad to convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war,” he wrote within the e book.

While the Ministry of External Affairs has made no feedback within the matter, Pompeo says that no different nation might have executed what US did that night time to keep away from a horrible end result. “As with all diplomacy, the people working the problem set matter a great deal, at least in the short run. I was fortunate to have great team members in place in India, none more so than Ken Juster, an incredibly capable ambassador. Ken loves India and its people,” he famous.

He additionally praised different diplomats together with David Hale who was the US ambassador to Pakistan then. Pompeo stated that the diplomats knew that their relationship with India was a precedence. “General McMaster and Admiral Philip Davidson, the head of what came to be renamed the US Indo-Pacific Command, understood India’s importance, too,” he stated.

“Although often frustrated by the Indians, US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, a brilliant trade negotiator and a Bob Dole staff alumnus, making 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 tighten our ties with India and break the mold with new ideas,” Pompeo writes in his e book.