Mike Pompeo on Balakot Strike: Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has claimed that his then Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj He was apprised that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear strike in the wake of the Balakot surgical strike in February 2019, and that India was preparing its own aggressive response. Pompeo made the comments in his latest book, Never Give An Inch: Fighting for America I Love, which hits stores Tuesday, January 24.
According to Pompeo, the incident occurred on February 27–28, 2019, while he was in Hanoi for the US-North Korea summit, and his staff worked with both New Delhi and Islamabad to defuse the crisis. Spent the night
“I don’t think the world knows exactly how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to a nuclear explosion in February 2019. The truth is, I don’t even know the exact answer; I just know that it was close.” Pompeo wrote in his book.
In February 2019, Indian warplanes destroyed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training center in Pakistan’s Balakot in retaliation for the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.
What does Pompeo claim in his book?
“I will never forget the night I was in Hanoi, Vietnam – as if negotiating with the North Koreans on nuclear weapons was not enough – India and Pakistan exchanged fire with each other over the decades-long dispute over the northern border area. Started threatening Kashmir’s,” Pompeo said.
“In Hanoi, I woke up to talk with my Indian counterpart. She (Sushma Swaraj) believed that the Pakistanis had started preparing their nuclear weapons for attack. is considering. I asked him to do so.” Nothing and give us a minute to sort things out,” Pompeo claimed in his book.
The former US secretary further said that she began working with the ambassador, then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, who was with her in the small secure communications facility at their hotel.
“I reached out to Pakistan’s de facto leader, (Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, with whom I had engaged several times. I told him what the Indians had told me. He said it was not true. As that one might expect, they believed that 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 – for each side to To explain that was not preparing for a second nuclear war, Pompeo said.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs has not yet responded to Pompeo’s claims
However, there was no immediate response from the State Department on Pompeo’s claims.
“No other country could have done what we did that night to avoid dire consequences. As with all diplomacy, the people working on the problem matter a lot, at least in the short term. I wish the great team members Pompeo was fortunate to have the place in India, none other than Ken Juster, an incredibly capable ambassador. Ken loves India and its people.
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“And, above all, he loves the American people and works for us every day. My most senior diplomat, David Hale, was also the US ambassador to Pakistan and knew that our relationship with India was a priority. ” she added.
Pompeo writes in his latest book, “General McMaster and Admiral Philip Davidson, the head of what was named the US Indo-Pacific Command, also understood the importance of India.”
(With PTI inputs)