US averted India-Pak nuclear confrontation after Balakot: Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo, who served as the US Secretary of State from 2018-2021 under former president Donald Trump, has declared in a book that India and Pakistan came very close to a nuclear confrontation in 2019.

Pompeo writes in his latest book, Never give an inch: Fighting for the America I love that was launched on Tuesday (January 24), that he was in Hanoi, Vietnam to attend the US-North Korea Summit from February 27-28, 2019.

He was woken up at night to receive a call from the Indian Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, who told him that India suspected Pakistan was planning for a nuclear attack on her country in retaliation to the Balakot surgical strike by India. She also told him that India was preparing to respond in a similar manner.

Balakot surgical strike

In February 2019, India’s warplanes had bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in Pakistan after a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 100 kg of explosives into a bus in Pulwama district on February 14, 2019, killing 40 CRPF jawans.

The Pakistan-based terror group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, claimed the responsibility for the attack.

Also read: Balakot strikes shows shift in handling of terror attacks: IAF chief

Pompeo claims that his team worked overnight with both India and Pakistan to prevent an escalation of the crisis.

“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.

US prevented a nuclear confrontation

The former secretary of state writes that he asked his Indian counterpart to do nothing and to give the US some time to work things out. He began to work with the then National Security Advisor, John Bolton, who was with him in in Hanoi. Pompeo spoke to the Pakistani Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, (whom he refers to as the actual leader of Pakistan) and told Bajwa what the Indians had told him. General Bajwa reportedly told Pompeo that it wasn’t true.

General Bajwa told Pompeo that he believed the Indians were preparing their nuclear weapons for deployment. Pompeo writes that it took them a few hours – and “remarkably good work by our teams on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad” – to convince India and Pakistan that the other side was not preparing for nuclear war.

“No other nation could have done what we did that night to avoid a horrible outcome. As with all diplomacy, the people working the problem 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 writes.

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