India-Pak Were On Brink Of Nuclear War After Balakot Strike: Big New Claim
NDTV
Mike Pompeo said that US diplomats convinced both India and Pakistan that neither was preparing to go nuclear.
Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo wrote in a book published Tuesday that India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war in 2019 and that US intervention prevented escalation.
"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 likely future presidential contender wrote in "Never Give an Inch," his memoir of his time as Donald Trump's top diplomat and earlier CIA chief.
India in February 2019 broke precedent by launching airstrikes inside Pakistani territory after blaming a terrorist group there for a suicide bombing that killed 41 CRPF jawans in Kashmir. Pakistan shot down an Indian warplane, capturing the pilot.
Pompeo, who was in Hanoi for a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said he was woken up with an urgent call from a senior Indian official.
