‘Indian N-tests shook me’

Writing in his 957-page memoir My Life Clinton says he was ‘‘deeply concerned’’ about India’s five underground nuclear tests as they had shaken the efforts to ban nuclear testing. After Indian tests, ‘‘I urged Pakistan’s (then) PM Nawaz Sharif not to follow suit, but he could not resist the political pressure.’’ However, (then) PM A.B. Vajpayee did join him in pledging to forgo future tests, and ‘‘We agreed upon a set of positive principles that would govern our bilateral relationship that had been cool so long.’’ ‘‘Our national security people were convinced that, unlike the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, India and Pakistan knew little about each other’s nuclear capabilities and policies for using them,’’ Clinton says.

Recalling the time when India and Pakistan were caught in a standoff when ‘‘Pakistani forces under the command of General Pervez Musharraf crossed the line of control’’, Clinton wrote that then Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif called him and asked if he could come to Washington on July 4, the US Independence Day, to discuss the ‘‘standoff’’.’ ‘‘I told Sharif that he was always welcome to Washington but if he wanted me to spend US Independence Day with him, he had to come to the US knowing two things, first he had to agree to withdraw his troops back across the LoC, and second, I would not agree to intervene in the Kashmir dispute, especially under circumstances that appeared to reward Pakistan’s wrongful incursion,’’ Clinton wrote. — (PTI)