Pakistan was preparing to possibly fire nuclear weapons during a 1999
border conflict with India, moving the countries closer to nuclear war
than was commonly known at the time, according to a new article by
President Bill Clinton's chief White House adviser on South Asia.
Bruce O. Riedel, a senior director on the Clinton administration's
National Security Council, reports that U.S. intelligence had developed
"disturbing evidence that the Pakistanis were preparing their nuclear
arsenals for possible deployment." This information came as India was
seeking to turn back an incursion by Pakistani-backed forces in the
disputed territory of Kashmir, with heavy casualties, and as both sides
mobilized for an all-out war.
At a tense July 4 meeting in Blair House, Clinton confronted Pakistani
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with the intelligence, asking him whether he
was aware that his military was preparing intermediate-range missiles with
nuclear warheads, according to Riedel. He said that Sharif was "taken
aback."
Sharif was overthrown three months later by his military chief, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, who commanded all Pakistani military activities and is
now a close U.S. ally in the Afghanistan campaign against the al Qaeda
network and the Taliban militia.
Riedel's account, confirmed yesterday by other former U.S. officials,
indicated that the prospect of nuclear war that year was perhaps greater
than at any time since the United States and the Soviet Union faced off
during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
The article was prepared for the Center for the Advanced Study of India
at the University of Pennsylvania and was first described by the Sunday
Times of London. The account comes as Pakistan and India have again massed
troops along their border and as tensions are threatening to escalate
between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Christina B. Rocca, assistant secretary of state for South Asian
affairs, opened talks in New Delhi yesterday in a bid to end the standoff,
which began in December after a fatal attack on the Indian parliament that
New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim guerrillas. The difficulty of
Rocca's mission was immediately underscored when gunmen opened fire
yesterday on a bus and an Indian army camp in Kashmir, killing at least 30
people.
On Monday, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith told a conference
on American-Indian defense trade that the Bush administration was "focused
intensely" on the danger posed by the five-month old mobilization by
Pakistan and India and the prospect of nuclear war.
The standoff concerns the Bush administration not just because of the
possibility of an escalation of the conflict but also because it is
constraining the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda militants crossing from
Afghanistan into Pakistan. For several weeks, U.S. officials have been
urging Pakistan to attack pockets of al Qaeda militants in semiautonomous
tribal areas along the Afghan border. But Pakistan has responded that it
cannot do so, in part because it has deployed 80 percent of its army along
the border with India.
The conflict three years ago erupted when forces backed by Pakistan
seized army positions in the remote mountain area of Kargil on the Indian
side of the line that divides Kashmir. Indian troops mounted a furious
offensive to retake the heights.
Only a year earlier, both countries had conducted nuclear tests. The
new fighting threatened to escalate to an unprecedented level. Riedel said
the Clinton administration "confronted the reality of two nuclear-tested
states whose missiles could be fired with flight times of three to five
minutes from launch to impact." He said one well-informed assessment found
that a Pakistani strike with a small bomb against Bombay could kill up to
850,000 people.
Other senior members of Clinton's foreign policy team confirmed
Riedel's account that the administration had obtained unsettling
intelligence about Pakistan's nuclear preparations.
"It was certainly enough for us to take it very seriously," said Strobe
Talbott, former deputy secretary of state. He added that the Kargil crisis
"had the potential of going all the way."
Another former official involved in addressing the issue for the
Clinton administration said the United States had learned that Pakistan
was moving its intermediate-range Ghauri missiles, which were intended to
carry nuclear warheads, out of storage and to new locations. He said the
movement might have been offensive in nature or might have been intended
to protect the missiles by dispersing them in case of a preemptive Indian
strike. The official added that he could not remember whether there was
other intelligence relating to nuclear preparations.
The disclosure that U.S. officials were concerned about Pakistan's
missile program is significant because much of the U.S. analysis of
Islamabad's nuclear program has focused on the Pakistanis using bombers to
deliver the warheads. Indeed, a former U.S. official familiar with the
crisis said Riedel's account seemed accurate except for the suggestion
that Pakistan would use missiles rather than bombers.
As tensions over Kargil mounted, Clinton conferred on July 4 with
national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and other key aides
before meeting the Pakistani prime minister, who had come to Washington on
an emergency visit. "The mood was somber," Riedel recalled. "Sandy Berger
opened the session by telling the president that this could be the most
important foreign policy meeting of his presidency because the stakes
could include nuclear war."
At an opening meeting between U.S. and Pakistani officials on July 4,
Clinton demanded that Pakistan withdraw its army and allied militia forces
from the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kashmir, Riedel said. Most
of the officials then left the room, leaving only Clinton, Sharif and
Riedel.
"Clinton asked Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war
really was? Did Sharif know that his military was preparing their
nuclear-tipped missiles. Sharif seemed taken aback and said only that
India was probably doing the same," Riedel said. "The president reminded
Sharif how close the U.S. and Soviet Union had come to nuclear war in 1962
over Cuba. Did Sharif realize that if even one bomb was dropped . . .
Sharif finished his sentence and said it would be a catastrophe."
Under intense pressure, Sharif agreed to order a withdrawal from
Indian-controlled Kashmir, defusing the conflict and the immediate
potential for a nuclear exchange.
But absent a diplomatic breakthrough on Kashmir and other divisive
issues, former U.S. officials said the danger of such a cataclysmic war
remains.
"Clearly, tensions are increasing as a result of the latest incident in
Kashmir," said Karl F. Inderfurth, assistant secretary of state for South
Asian affairs under Clinton. "Another spark could be set off, and this
could become even more dangerous than Kargil if this is not resolved
soon."
Officials at Pakistan's embassy said last night that they had no
comment on this report.
Kashmir on
the Brink
