In a TV interview, Gandhi family loyalist Mani Shankar Aiyar recounted how Rajiv Gandhi told him that India was on the point of going to war with Pakistan without the PM's knowledge. Aiyar's revelation confirms former Congress leader Natwar Singh's contention that Rajiv was not kept in the loop about the massive exercises that spooked the Pakistanis.
G Parthasarathy, who was in Rajiv's inner circle, recalled Rajiv had agreed to the military exercises. But communication between DGMOs of the two countries was not maintained. So the presence of the Indian army columns close to the border caused serious alarm in Pakistan. Vikram Sood, former RAW chief, said, "Zia-ul-Haq thought it was in invasion."
Parthasarathy said this was followed by movements by the Pakistan army to the border, which was officially denied by Islamabad. At this point, Rajiv Gandhi asked for US and Soviet surveillance to check whether the Pakistanis were indeed moving their troops. The request was made by Natwar Singh, then minister of state for external affairs, who called in the US and Soviet ambassadors to make the request. The surveillance confirmed that Pakistan had not mobilized its troops to be any threat to India. Instead, this was an "aggressive" move by the Indian side.
Around this time, Indian journalist Kulip Nayar interviewed AQ Khan who told him that Pakistan had acquired nuclear weapons capability and would not hesitate to use it against India. "Tell them we have it, we have it," a furious Khan told Nayar as recounted by Nayar in his book 'Beyond The Lines'. It was the first authoritative admission by the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb that Pakistan had crossed the nuclear threshold.
India then invited a Pakistani delegation to come over to discuss de-escalation. The Pakistani side was led by their foreign secretary Abdul Sattar while the Indian side was led by acting foreign secretary Alfred Gonsalves (Rajiv Gandhi had just fired foreign secretary AP Venkateswaran). They agreed to the terms of a mutual pullback.
In his interview, Mani Shankar Aiyar revealed he gave Rajiv Gandhi advice on how to recover lost ground and make up relations with Gen Zia and Pakistan. He gave Rajiv Gandhi three options of which Rajiv accepted one which Mani thought was the least likely to be accepted. Rajiv, on Mani's advice, invited Zia for lunch in Delhi.
http://ift.tt/1oPGhhm Gandhi,Operation Brasstacks,Mani Shankar Aiyar,AQ Khan
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.
from Top Stories - Google News http://ift.tt/UIyloI
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment