WASHINGTON (Web Desk) – The former top official at the White House has revealed that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) told President Bill Clinton just ahead of his meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on July 4, 1999, that Pakistan was preparing to deploy its nuclear weapons for any possible use in Kargil war against India.
Mr Bruce Riedel, who remained serving at White House’s national security council and was one of the few people present in Clinton-Sharif meeting in which Pakistan agreed to withdraw its troops from Kargil, disclosed the fact in a piece for the Daily Beast in which he paid rich tribute to Clinton’s then National Security Adviser Sandy Berger saying that this was the one who stopped Armageddon in 1999.
According to Riedel, Sandy Berger met Indian counterpart Brajesh Mishra in Europe to discuss the presence of Pakistani troops in Kargil. In the meeting Mishra categorically told Berger that India was all set to go on war against Pakistan if doesn’t withdraw troops from Kargil to the previously agreed ceasefire line.
Following the meeting Mr Sandy Berger believed that a war between two nuclear nations could be very dangerous and Pakistan was going to lose it any way, who would afterwards look for using nukes against India.
The CIA report further backed the assessment of Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who has died of cancer on December 2 this year, and as a result President strongly pushed Pakistan for withdrawing troops back to ceasefire line in 1999 hence preventing the mega war.
“Nawaz Sharif’s announcement of moving back to ceasefire line in Kargil however costed him his government in October 1999,” Bruce Riedel concluded.
