America Former Security Advisor John Bolton said that in 2019 India-Pakistan A situation like a nuclear attack had arisen between them, but as soon as they came to know about it, they contacted India’s NSA Ajit Doval. A book by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has come out in which claims were made that India’s neighbor Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear attack. After the deadly terrorist attack on Indian Army soldiers, India had terrorized Pakistan’s Balakot with the help of Air Force.
Bolton has been mentioned in Pompeo’s book that he took stock of the situation by contacting National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Bolton said that the NSA told him that India had carried out the operation in self-defense, to which he agreed. An extract from the book states, “We wanted to know from the Indian side what the issue was. Ajit Doval was right as always, he told us about the whole issue, to which we agreed, that India has no doubt the right to self-defence. We told them to maintain peace and we make the same appeal to Pakistan.” In an exclusive conversation with News9 Plus, John Bolton recollects his conversation with NSS Ajit Doval.
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Former US Defense Secretary Mike Pompeo claimed that India and Pakistan were close to nuclear war in February 2019. In his recently released memoir, Pompeo has mentioned that on 14 February 2019, suicide bombers of Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked a CRPF bus, in which 44 Indian Army personnel were killed. Later, on February 26, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on Jaish positions, where a MiG-21 aircraft fell inside Pakistan’s territory and the pilot was captured by the Pakistan Army. Bolton was at that time in Hanoi, Vietnam for the summit between then US President Donald Trump and North Korean Kim Jong.
Bolton said in the conversation that we came to know then that the army of India and Pakistan were face to face. America was worried that the dispute should not increase further and they wanted to know what India was going to do. Referring to Pompeo’s book, he said that Qamar Javed Bajwa, who was then Pakistan’s Army Chief, believed that India was preparing for a nuclear attack. Bolton says that we explained to both the sides that no one is preparing for the attack, we managed to pacify both the sides. He says that after making calls one after the other, we contacted Ajit Doval and understood about the whole matter.
In an exclusive conversation with News9, in response to a question, Bolton said, “Well, I haven’t… I haven’t read the book myself. I have seen some media reports about it. I actually wrote about that incident in my book as well. We were in Hanoi with President Trump for the second meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and as I recall, late in the evening we heard that there had been a military contact between the armies of India and Pakistan. At that time Pompeo and I were in the presidential quarter in the same hotel and we were worried that there might be a nuclear attack here. I remembered Ajit Doval and wanted to know what the Indian side was going to do.
He said he thinks India acted in self-defense and both of us, Pompeo and I, said we agreed. India clearly had a right to self-defense, and we urged that they be prudent and we’re going to ask the Pakistani side to be prudent, and I think as the night went on and then the next day the tension began to subside, and I think what we saw was that India acted in self-defense and behaved responsibly.
