Actually the IAF could not have done a single effective bombing mission without Israeli support. And BTW India went running to Israel for this help but feel free to rewrite history.
Oh..BTW it is not surprising that India is only now talking about overpriced Israeli goods considering that India has been buying from Israel for more than a decade..when the only option to get western tech was through Israel,everyone was very happy. Today when India has other options,Israel looks like they are on the outside.
Actually the IAF could not have done a single effective bombing mission without Israeli support. And BTW India went running to Israel for this help but feel free to rewrite history
Nawaz sharif went running to White house to end the hostilities. The thumping he got from Bill Clinton still reverberates in my mind.
Wanna dispute this. How about a french source giving a first hand account of that insult your former prime minister has to face.
And look at the language used by your ally
A reckless Pervez Musharraf
A feckless Nawaz Sharif
Pakistan an extremely unstable country
Pakistan's reckless adventurism
war-mongering generals
Pakistan's regular army involved in "Cheating"
Pakistan being an allay is the source of trouble and terrorism
A
reckless Pervez Musharraf, a
feckless Nawaz Sharif, a resolute Vajpayee and a principled Bill Clinton are central characters in an unusual policy paper titled "American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House," by former White House official Bruce Riedel. The paper, presented at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Advanced Studies of India, reads more like a fast paced film script than a foreign policy critique. Riedel's account of the Kargil episode
portrays Pakistan as an extremely unstable country where the military was at odds with the political and civilian leadership and it was not clear who was calling the shots. But the narrative suggests that the architect of
Pakistan's reckless adventurism at that time was none other than its current ruler Pervez Musharraf, who comes across as a
war-mongering general who brought the region to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.
"Prime Minister Sharif had seemed genuinely interested in pursuing the Lahore process when he met with Vajpayee and he had argued eloquently with a series of American guests... that he wanted an end to the fifty year old quarrel with India. His military chief, General Pervez Musharraf, seemed to be in a different mold. He was said to be a hardliner on Kashmir, a man some feared was determined to humble India once and for all," writes Riedel. According to Riedel, US intelligence had information that the Pakistani military, then led by Musharraf, was preparing its nuclear arsenal for possible use in a wider war arising from the Kargil clash, most likely without the knowledge of Sharif.
When Sharif pleaded with Washington to save Pakistan from rout following a determined Indian response to the Kargil incursion, Riedel says he recommended to President Clinton that he use the information about Pakistani nuclear readiness only when Sharif was without his aides, especially Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad, who was known to be very close to the ISI. When Clinton later reveals the extent of Islamabad's nuclear preparedness, Sharif "seemed taken aback and said only that India was probably doing the same," says Riedel, who was asked to stay behind as a notes-taker by the US President despite Sharif's plea that they have a one-on one. Clinton then berates Sharif, asking "did he know how crazy that (getting nuclear missiles ready) was?"
An angry Clinton goes on to hector Sharif, reminding him that
Pakistan is playing fast and loose with terrorism. He (Clinton) had asked repeatedly for Pakistani help to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice from Afghanistan. Sharif had promised often to do so but had done nothing.
Instead the ISI worked with Bin Laden and the Taliban to foment terrorism, Riedel discloses Clinton as telling Sharif. (More recent reports say Musharraf sabotaged a CIA project to train Pakistanis commandos to catch Bin Laden). Clinton finally gets Sharif to sign the Kargil withdrawal agreement by threatening to release a draft statement that would pin all the blame for the Kargil crisis on Pakistan the same night if he did not back down. The US would also release statement that would mention Pakistan's role in supporting terrorists in Afghanistan and India.
Reidel reveals that a statement to that effect had been readied by the administration, confirming the widespread belief that the US is fully cognisant of Pakistan's role in sponsoring terrorism but for a variety of reasons keeps protecting its client state. In relating the build-up that led to the Kargil war, Riedel also exposes the lies that Musharraf has consistently peddled ? that no Pakistani troops were involved in the incursions and it was the mujaheedin who infiltrated Kargil. In fact, Riedel writes, Pakistan's regular army and the Kashmir militants it backs were involved in
"cheating" on a tradition under which the two countries -- India and Pakistan -- left forward posts unmanned in winter.
"Pakistan denied its troops were involved, claiming that only Kashmiri militants were doing the fighting -- a claim not taken seriously anywhere," says Riedel. Musharraf has also been accused of compulsively lying about other issues such as the presence of Pakistani troops and advisors in Taliban-time Afghanistan and the activities of US forces in Pakistan. In fact, Riedel suggests that Sharif was so scared of the Musharraf that he came to Washington with his wife and children fearing that he may not be able to go back. The Pakistani prime minister tells Clinton that unless the US gives him some face-saving formula for withdrawing from Kargil, the fundamentalists back home will gun for him and this might be his last meeting with the US President.
"It was a possible indication that he was afraid he might not be able to go home if the summit failed or that the military was telling him to leave. At a minimum, Sharif seemed to be hedging his bet on whether this would be a round trip," writes Riedel. Riedel's narrative reveals such a chilling picture of Pakistani power dynamic and rampant militarism that Indian officials who are familiar with the situation rued the Bush administration's current wisdom in enlisting the military regime as an ally in the war against terrorism. "They (the Bush administration) have created this grand fiction of the
Pakistani military being an ally when it has been the source of so much trouble and terrorism in the region," one official said. "This will come back to haunt them."
Riedel himself was uniquely placed to record what he describes as "one of the most sensitive diplomatic high wire acts of any administration" that averted a possible nuclear war. A career intelligence analyst with the CIA, he was at that time a Senior Director at the National Security Council and Special Assistant to Clinton on South Asia. Although the CIA is said to be institutionally inimical to India because of its Cold War-era socialistic orientation, Riedel consistently pushed for better US ties with New Delhi throughout the 1990s and was a key player in changing the dynamics between the two countries during that time. Riedel's paper also suggests that Washington increasingly respected India's restraint and consulted New Delhi in real-time as it turned the screws on Pakistan, a system that the current administration also appears to follow. Although, US officials unfailingly speak of phone calls and talks with Indian and Pakistani leaders in the same breath, the nature and tone of the exchanges are entirely different as is revealed during the Kargil crisis.
Riedel says shortly after Sharif called Clinton pleading for American intervention, the US President phoned Vajpayee to apprise him of the developments. The President sought to reassure Vajpayee that he would not countenance Pakistani aggression, not reward them for violating the LoC and that he stood by the US commitment that direct talks between India and Pakistan were the only solution to Kashmir, not third party intervention. Later, during a break in the talks on July 4, Clinton again puts through a short call to New Delhi just to tell Vajpayee that he was holding firm on demanding the withdrawal to the LoC. "Vajpayee had little to say, even asking the President 'what do you want me to say?'" recalls Riedel. "There was no give in New Delhi and none was asked for." When the talks resume, Clinton presents Sharif with a statement in which the key sentence reads Pakistan "has agreed to take concrete and immediate steps for the restoration of the LoC." The statement also calls for a ceasefire once the withdrawal is completed and restoration of the Lahore process. "The President was clear and firm. Sharif had a choice, withdraw behind the LoC and the moral compass would tilt back toward Pakistan or stay and fight a wider and dangerous war with India without American sympathy," writes Riedel.
Sharif reads the statement several times quietly and asks to talk with his team. After a few minutes, he returns with the good news. The statement was acceptable with one addition. He wants a sentence added that would say "the President would take personal interest to encourage an expeditious resumption and intensification of the bilateral efforts (i.e. Lahore) once the sanctity of the LoC had been fully restored." Clinton has no problem with that as long as it is understood that the overall language meant a Pakistani withdrawal first and did not imply a quid pro quo. Attempts by Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed, the ISI frontman, to reopen the language is curtly brushed aside by National Security Adviser Sandy Berger who tells him that Sharif has okayed it. The President then calls Vajpayee a third time to preview the statement. When Sharif goes to the White House early the next morning for a photo op with his family and the President, Riedel says his mood was glum and he was not looking forward to the trip home. "The Prime Minister knew he had done the right thing for Pakistan and the world, but he was not sure his army would see it that way," he writes.
But he lives up to his word and withdraws Pakistani forces from Kargil. Clinton too lives up to his word, says Riedel. As soon as the Pakistani forces were back across the LoC he pressed India for a cease-fire in the Kargil sector. After this occurred Clinton privately invites Sharif to send a senior trusted official to Washington to begin discreet discussions on how to follow up on his "personal commitment" to the Lahore process. But Sharif does not get back on that, indicating that all was not well with the political-military equation in Islamabad. Finally in September 1999, Sharif sends his brother Shahbaz. But all that Shahbaz wants to discuss is what the US could do to help his brother stay in power. "He all but said that they knew a military coup was coming," recalls Riedel. It did, a few weeks later, when Musharraf toppled Sharif.
According to Riedel, the most important strategic result of Kargil and the July 4 summit was its impact on Indo-US relations. The clarity of the American position on Kargil and its refusal to give Pakistan any reward for its aggression had an immediate and dynamic impact on the relationship. "Doors opened in New Delhi to Americans that had been shut for years. The Indian elite -- including the military -- and the Indian public began to shed long held negative perceptions of the US," writes Riedel, saying the Bush administration has accelerated and intensified the process of US-India rapprochement.
http://membres.multimania.fr/tthreat/article3.htm