Image Source : AP/FILE Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Mike Pompeo on Balakot strike: Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that his then-Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj had apprised him that Pakistan was gearing up for a nuclear assault within the wake of the Balakot surgical strike in February 2019, and that India is getting ready its personal escalatory response. Pompeo made these remarks in his newest ebook ‘Never Give an Inch: Fighting for America I Love’ which hit the shops on Tuesday, January 24.
According to Pompeo, the incident occurred on February 27–28, 2019, whereas he was in Hanoi for the US–North Korea Summit, and his employees spent the night time working with each New Delhi and Islamabad to defuse this 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 wrote in his ebook.
In February 2019, Indian warplanes had destroyed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist coaching centre in Balakot, Pakistan, in retaliation to the Pulwama terror assault that claimed the lives of 40 CRPF troopers.
What Pompeo claimed in his ebook?
“I will never forget the night I was in Hanoi, Vietnam when – as if negotiating with the North Koreans on nuclear weapons wasn’t enough – India and Pakistan started threatening each other in connection with a decades-long dispute over the northern border region of Kashmir,” Pompeo acknowledged.
“In Hanoi, I was awakened to speak with my Indian counterpart. She (Sushma Swaraj) believed the Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, she informed me, was contemplating its own escalation. I asked her to do nothing and give us a minute to sort things out,” Pompeo claimed in his ebook.
Former US Secretary additional acknowledged that he started working with Ambassador, then National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was with him within the tiny safe communications facility of 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. 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,” Pompeo added.
India’s External Affairs ministry but to answer Pompeo’s claims
However, there was no quick response from the Ministry of External Affairs to Pompeo’s claims.
“No other nation could have done what we did that night to avoid a horrible outcome. As with all diplomacy, the people working on 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,” Pompeo mentioned.
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“And, most of all, he loves the American people and worked his tail off for us every day. My most senior diplomat, David Hale, had also been the US ambassador to Pakistan and knew that our relationship with India was a priority,” he added.
“General McMaster and Admiral Philip Davidson, the pinnacle of what got here to be renamed the US Indo-Pacific Command, understood India’s significance, too,” Pompeo wrote in his newest ebook.
(With PTI inputs)
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