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| Clinton played "hoax" to pressure Pak on Kargil | | | Islamabad, Oct 15: A former Pakistan foreign official has accused the Clinton administration of playing a "hoax" to put "pressure" on Islamabad to withdraw its troops and end the 1999 Kargil conflict with India.
Shamshad Ahmad, who was the Pakistan Foreign Secretary at that time and who attended the meeting between former premier Nawaz Sharif and US President Bill Clinton in Washington, said in an article published in a leading daily here that the American president asked Sharif if he was aware that the Pakistan Army had began moving nuclear-tipped missiles to the borders.
"In my view, it was only an American hoax to bring Pakistan under pressure for withdrawl," he said.
Ahmad also said that there was no need for Musharraf in his book 'In the Line of Fire' to give an explanation that Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons at that time.
In his book Musharraf has said it was a "myth that we (India-Pakistan) came to the brink of nuclear war. The limits of our conventional forces were nowhere in sight, still less in danger of being crossed. I can only say with authority that in 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational." "Merely exploring a bomb does not mean that you are operationally capable of deploying nuclear forces in the field and delivering a bomb across the border over selected target.
"Any talk of preparing for nuclear strikes is preposterous," he has said in his book, an account contradicted by former US Secretary Strobe Talbott and Clinton's aide Bruce Riedel in their separate accounts on Kargil. |
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