Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had said that Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack after the Balakot surgical strike and India was readying its own escalatory response, according to a book written by former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
"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 wrote in his book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for America I Love.
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Pompeo mentioned in his book that when the incident occurred, he was in Hanoi for the US–North Korea Summit. The diplomat also said that his staff spent the entire night working with both New Delhi and Islamabad to defuse the situation.
"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.
He also wrote about his conversation with Pakistan and said that the Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa dismissed the news of Islamabad's preparation for a nuclear war.
"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 said.
Talking about the role his team in India played in de-escalating the crisis, the diplomat praised Ken Juster, a former US envoy to India.
"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 wrote.
India's external affairs ministry is yet to respond to Pompeo's claims.
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