Ex US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s ebook ‘Never Give an Inch…” hit the stores

Washington:

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that he was awakened to speak to his then Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj who told him that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack in the wake of the Balakot surgical strike in February 2019 and India is preparing its own escalatory response.

In his latest book ‘Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love’ that hit the stores on Tuesday, Pompeo says that the incident took place when he was in Hanoi for the US-North Korea Summit on February 27-28 and his team worked overnight with both New Delhi and Islamabad to avert this crisis.

“I don’t assume 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. The fact is, I do not know exactly the reply both; I simply understand it was too shut,” Pompeo writes.

India’s warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in Pakistan in February 2019 in response to the Pulwama terror attack that killed 40 CRPF jawans.

“I’ll always remember the evening I used to be in Hanoi, Vietnam when – as if negotiating with the North Koreans on nuclear weapons wasn’t sufficient – India and Pakistan began threatening one another in reference to a decades-long dispute over the northern border area of Kashmir,” Pompeo says.

“After an Islamist terrorist assault in Kashmir- most likely enabled partially by Pakistan’s lax counterterror insurance policies – killed forty Indians, India responded with an air strike towards terrorists inside Pakistan. The Pakistanis shot down a airplane in a subsequent dogfight and stored the Indian pilot prisoner,” he said.

“In Hanoi, I used to be woke up to talk with my Indian counterpart. He believed the Pakistanis had begun to organize their nuclear weapons for a strike. India, he knowledgeable me, was considering its personal escalation. I requested him to do nothing and provides us a minute to kind issues out (sic),” Pompeo writes in his book, which wrongly refers to Swaraj as “he”.

“I started to work with Ambassador (then National Security Advisor John) Bolton, who was with me within the tiny safe communications facility in our lodge. I reached the precise chief of Pakistan, (Army chief) General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, with whom I had engaged many occasions. I instructed him what the Indians had instructed me. He mentioned it wasn’t true,” Pompeo says.

“As one may 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,” the 59-year-old top former American diplomat wrote in his book.

There was no immediate comment from the Ministry of External Affairs on Pompeo’s claims.

“No different nation may have accomplished what we did that evening to keep away from a horrible end result. As with all diplomacy, the individuals working the issue set matter a terrific deal, not less than within the quick run. I used to be lucky to have nice workforce members in place in India, none extra so than Ken Juster, an extremely succesful ambassador. Ken loves India and its individuals,” he said.

“And, most of all, he loves the American individuals and labored his tail off for us on daily basis. My most senior diplomat, David Hale, had additionally been the US ambassador to Pakistan and knew that our relationship with India was a precedence,” Pompeo said.

“General McMaster and Admiral Philip Davidson, the top of what got here to be renamed the US Indo-Pacific Command, understood India’s significance, too,” he said.

“Although usually annoyed by the Indians, US commerce consultant Robert Lighthizer – an excellent commerce negotiator and a Bob Dole employees alumnus, making him a near-Kansan – was a terrific accomplice working to deepen financial ties. We all shared the view that America needed to make a daring strategic effort to tighten our ties with India and break the mildew with new concepts,” Pompeo writes in his book.

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