Clinton on Pakistan's Attempt to Nuke India

[Guest guest]

President Bill Clinton

"Pakistan and India were engaged in a conflict and the United States

had intelligence that Pakistan was preparing its nuclear arsenal for

possible deployment."

 

 

President William Jefferson Clinton was the 42nd President of the

United States. He served two terms and at times enjoyed widespread

popularity.

 

Speaking about an incident on the fourth of July in 1999, President

Clinton recalled a Blair House meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz

Sharif of Pakistan. Pakistan and India were engaged in a conflict and

the United States had intelligence that Pakistan was preparing its

nuclear arsenal for possible deployment.

 

"It was clear that either side might decide to bring nuclear weapons

into play," recalls President Clinton. "It was further clear to me

that the Indians and the Pakistanis, even though they shared the

Indian subcontinent, did not know as much about each other's doctrine

for use of nuclear power or capacities as we and the Soviet Union had

known during the Cold War."

 

"So now you have a subcontinent with a fair number of nuclear

weapons, with uncertain doctrines for use and - somewhat questionable

security of the weapons themselves and the materials used to make

them. And all of a sudden, we've got this huge crisis. No one had

thought through, in my opinion, on the Pakistani side - and maybe on

the Indian side - how much they were increasing the risk to the whole

world by precipitating this huge crisis when they're both sitting on

nuclear arsenals," President Clinton says.

 

"I knew my only real job on the Fourth of July was to get Pakistan

back across that Line of Control under - whatever I had to do to get

it done; because, otherwise, we were just out there rolling dice,

hoping to goodness that nothing terrible would happen."

http://www.pbs.org/avoidingarmageddon/learnTheFacts/learn_01_02c.html