‘US saw Pak blundering into N-war, that was breakthrough with India’

Q: Clinton’s trip to india was so successful, it went really a long way in taking the sting out of tension in the relationship…

A: Yes, but i think the sting was out of the tension already, remember that was nine months after Kargil…I would argue that the breakthrough moment was in July 1999, when Prime Minister Vajpayee had enough confidence in Clinton and his goodwill that he suspended partially his scepticism about American mediating, or what we called at the time, facilitating, to let Clinton work on Nawaz Sharif in Blair House, and get Nawaz Sharif on an unconditional basis to pull Pakistani troops back on the northern side of the Line of Control. That was far and away in substantive terms, the most important moment…

How did this happen, how did Prime Minister Vajpayee request Clinton to get Nawaz Sharif to withdraw?

Oh no, let’s be clear about that. Prime Minister Vajpayee did not request Clinton to meet with Nawaz Sharif. What happened was that Nawaz Sharif knew he was in a perilous situation and he called Clinton and said, I’m coming. And Clinton said, don’t come unless you’re prepared to unconditionally withdraw. Nawaz Sharif said, I’m coming. Clinton repeated it. Nawaz Sharif said, I’m getting on the airplane, now.

So not only did Clinton not have a request from Vajpayee, Sharif didn’t have a request from Clinton. This was very much at Nawaz Sharif’s initiative.

Clinton decided to let him come. But he also decided that he would have to find a way of staying in the closest possible contact with Vajpayee, throughout the day, that Sunday. And I forget how many times he called, three times or something like that, I was on the phone to Jaswant Singh every step of the way.

We would take breaks with the Pakistanis. We’d go into the other room, we’d get onto the phone, ten-and-a-half hours difference or whatever, it was already quite late at night.

And Clinton would simply walk through everything Nawaz Sharif had said, everything that he, Clinton, had said, everything that he, Clinton, intended to do. He was telling Vajpayee exactly what was going on with Nawaz Sharif, sometimes within ten minutes of having finished talking to Sharif.

So this must have been a huge, confidence-building measure…

That’s exactly what it was. It was like testing a brand new vehicle on a dangerous mountain road.

Why did Clinton do this?

Because the stakes were so high. We honestly felt that this was the stuff of which nuclear war is made, this was Guns of August plus nuclear weapons…Barbara Tuchman, the historian, wrote a book which was extremely influential on John F. kennedy, a book that Clinton also read, called, Guns of August and it was how the European powers blundered into World War I. Clinton saw Pakistan, by precipitating the Kargil crisis, as potentially blundering into a nuclear war on the sub-continent. And he felt he should do everything in his power to stop that, even if that meant running risks with Sharif and with Vajpayee.

And what Clinton did throughout all of this, was to hold the line. What Nawaz Sharif wanted was to be paid, he wanted a concession of some kind from the Indian side and from the American side for pulling back. He wanted either a promise that the US would mediate, a promise on India’s part that it would negotiate the status of Kashmir. And Clinton kept saying, no, no, no.’’