Book Name: Engaging India – Purpose of writing this book was to show the new bonds being created between India and USA at the turn of Millenium. The book promotes India's stance and was written to promote US-India Friendship.
Author: Strobe Talbott – who was US Deputy Secretary of Defence at the time of Kargil War. He was also part of Bill Clinton's team that negotiated with Nawaz Sharif during the those days. He was a personal friend of Jaswant Singh who at various times worked as Defence, Finance and External Affairs Minister of India.
The excerpts, that I present here, indicate that Pakistanis were in no hurry to withdrawal. Nawaz Sharif was afraid – not of India Army's victories or Pakistani casualties – but of the response of Pakistani Army. He was more concerned of his political survival and went to Washington with his whole family – in case he would need a political asylum. He also played the fundamentalist army takeover card with Clinton.
During the whole talks, not once did Nawaz Sharif said anything about Indian advances or casualties of Pakistani Army as is quoted by Indians; He wanted US to mediate the Kashmir Issue.
The main point is that: during whole talks; Clinton stressed a Pakistani withdrawal as a pre-requisite to help Nawaz Sharif.
Overall impression is that Pakistan Army was well dug-in and was in no hurry to leave the Kargil heights. It was Clinton's pressure to which Nawaz gave in.
Here are the excerpts:
Indian efforts to dislodge the infiltrators prompted Pakistani shelling that hit an ammunition dump in Kargil. Many residents fled, and Pakistan used the ensuing pandemonium to send in reinforcements. By the end of the month, the town had to be evacuated, and the initial skirmishing had grown into a full-fledged border conflict involving infantry assaults, artillery barrages, and aerial operations including attacks on ground positions by helicopter gunships. The Pakistanis shot down two Indian MiGs and moved regular army troops into the Kargil area to construct bunkers on the Indian side of the line.
During the first week in June, Clinton turned his own attention to India and Pakistan. In letters to Nawaz Sharif and Vajpayee, Clinton made Pakistan’s withdrawal a precondition for a settlement and the price it must pay for the U.S. diplomatic involvement it had long sought. Clinton followed up with phone calls to the two leaders in mid- June.
The exchanges bet ween Indian and Pakistani officials sputtered through June while the fighting between military units intensified along a widening front. Indian forces were suffering terrible losses as they tried to fight their way up steep mountainsides against well-dug-in Pakistani positions. Mid-month, the Indians upped the ante by firing on targets on the Pakistani side of the Line of Control.
American experts following the war were more worried than ever that the Indians would attempt an end run, punching through the line at one or more points where they would have the advantage of terrain and supply lines. India’s restraint in not exercising this option almost certainly cost it additional casualties around Kargil. (i.e Indians were afraid to increase the area of conflict or they simply did not have capacity. Consider this, that they were short of Bofors spare parts and had to get them from guns spread all over the India.) - My Commentary
In late June Clinton sent Tony Zinni, the Marine general in charge of the U.S. Central Command. Tony warned Musharraf that India would cross the Line of Control itself if Pakistan did not pull back. Musharraf professed to be unimpressed.
Back in Washington, the administration let it be known that if Sharif did not order a pullback, we would hold up a $100 million International Monetary Fund loan that Pakistan sorely needed.
Through our ambassador in Islamabad, Bill Milam, who had replaced Tom Simons, Sharif begged Clinton to come to his rescue with a plan that would stop the fighting and set the stage for a U.S.-brokered solution to Kashmir.
On Friday, July 2, Sharif phoned Clinton and pleaded for his personal intervention in South Asia. Clinton replied that he would consider it only if it was understood up-front that Pakistani withdrawal would have to be immediate and unconditional.
The next day Sharif called Clinton to say that he was packing his bags and getting ready to fly immediately to Washington—never mind that he had not been invited. He warned Sharif not to come unless he was prepared to announce unconditional withdrawal; otherwise, his trip would make a bad situation worse.
During that hectic day, we got word that Sharif did not have time— or perhaps did not have enough support from the Pakistani military—to arrange for an aircraft to bring him to Washington. He boarded a Pakistan International flight that normally flew from Karachi to New York but would make a special stop at Dulles Airport to drop off Sharif and his retinue. In addition to his advisers he was bringing his wife and children with him. That news caused us to wonder whether he was coming to seek an end to the crisis or political asylum.
It was not hard to anticipate what Sharif would ask for. His opening proposal would be a cease-fire to be followed by negotiations under American auspices. His fallback would make Pakistani withdrawal conditional on Indian agreement to direct negotiations sponsored and probably mediated by the United States. Either way, he would be able to claim that the incursion had forced India, under American pressure, to accept Pakistani terms.
We would put before him two press statements and let Sharif decide which would be released at the end of the Blair House talks. The first would hail him as a peacemaker for retreating—or, as we would put it euphemistically, “restoring and respecting the sanctity of the Line of Control.” The second would blame him for starting the crisis and for the escalation sure to follow his failed mission to Washington.
Sandy and Bruce arranged for Bandar bin Sultan, a member of the Saudi royal family and the kingdom’s ambassador in Washington, to pick Sharif up at the airport. Bandar, the dean of the diplomatic corps, was a wily, well-connected power broker throughout the Greater Middle East and the Islamic world. He would use the car ride into town to soften up Sharif for the president’s message. After dropping Sharif at Blair House, Bandar told us that we should be prepared to deal with a man who was not just distraught about the crisis but terrified of the reaction from Musharraf and the military if he gave in to American pressure.
The overriding objective was to induce Pakistani withdrawal. But another, probably incompatible, goal was to increase the chances of Sharif ’s political survival. Rick Inderfurth and I had two other pieces of advice for the president, based on our own experience with the Pakistanis. First, the more Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad participated in the meeting, the less productive it would be.
Bruce added that if Clinton chose to tell Sharif that we knew his military was already taking steps toward deployment of nuclear weaponry, it was particularly important that Shamshad not be within earshot, since he was known to have close ties to the Pakistani military and the intelligence services.
Clinton pulled out an editorial cartoon by Jeff MacNelly from that day’s Chicago Tribune. It showed Indian and Pakistani soldiers waging a ferocious artillery battle at close quarters from atop two giant nuclear bombs.
I had the impression that Sharif was paying little attention, since he already knew what he was going to say—and we had all heard it before: if Clinton would just devote one percent of the time and energy he had put into the Middle East, there would be no crisis.
“I’m a moderate and forward-looking person,” said Sharif, in a tone more pleading than boasting. He needed Clinton’s help in getting India to move from its uncompromising position. Otherwise, he would be pushed aside and Islamic hard-liners.
“If you want me to be able to do anything with the Indians, I’ve got to have some leverage. Only withdrawal will bring this crisis to an end.”
Instead of relenting, Sharif made the matter worse: “I’m prepared to help resolve the current crisis in Kargil, but India must commit to resolve the larger issue in a specific time frame”—that is, negotiate a settlement on Kashmir under the pressure of a Pakistani-imposed, U.S.-sanctioned deadline.
“You had the Lahore process under way. That was great. But if I’m going to do any good for you, I’ve got to have a restoration of the integrity of your position”—that is, a return of Pakistani forces to their side of the line, and a return of Sharif to the Lahore process.
Sharif, just as we had expected, asked for a one-on-one. Once the rest of us were out of the room, Sharif reviewed what he portrayed as his unstinting effort over the past month to work out a deal with Vajpayee that would feature the trade-off between Pakistani withdrawal and a timetable for resolution of Kashmir. His version of events was neither coherent nor, insofar as we could reconstruct and check it afterward, consistent with what we understood to be the facts. The point, however, was clear enough: he had to have something to show for his trip to Washington beyond unconditional surrender over Kargil. Without some sort of face-saver, the army, egged on by fundamentalists back home, would overthrow him.
Adding to the danger was evidence that Sharif neither knew everything his military high command was doing nor had complete control over it. When Clinton asked him if he understood how far along his military was in preparing nuclear-armed missiles for possible use in a war against India, Sharif acted as though he was genuinely surprised.
Clinton had a statement ready to release to the press in time for the evening news shows that would lay all the blame for the crisis on Pakistan. Sharif went ashen. Sharif seemed beaten, physically and emotionally. He denied he had given any orders with regard to nuclear weaponry and said he was worried for his life.
Now that he had made maximum use of the “bad statement” we had prepared in advance, Clinton said, it was time to deploy the good one. But the key sentence in the new document was ours, not his, and it would nail the one thing we had to get out of the talks: “The prime minister has agreed to take concrete and immediate steps for the restoration of the Line of Control.” The paper called for a cease-fire but only after the Pakistanis were back on their side of the line. It reaffirmed Clinton’s long- standing plan to visit South Asia.
Clinton gave the statement to Sharif, who read it over carefully several times, asked to review it with his team, and finally accepted it with the request for one addition: a promise that Clinton would take a personal interest in encouraging an expeditious resumption and intensification of the bilateral efforts (that is, the Lahore process) once the sanctity of the Line of Control had been fully restored.
The meeting came quickly to a happy and friendly end, at least on Clinton’s part. He heaped praise on Sharif for passing the test to which they had subjected their personal relationship. As the president and his advisers were leaving Blair House, Shamshad Ahmad scurried after Sandy with alterations he wanted in the text. Sandy kept walking and said briskly over his shoulder, “Your boss says it’s okay as is.”
Before Bruce and Rick briefed the press on the statement, Clinton called Vajpayee to preview the statement. Once again, it was nearly a one- way conversation.
“That guy’s from Missouri big-time,” said Clinton afterward. “He wants to see those boys get off that mountain before he’s going to believe any of this.”*
*Missourians are known for their skepticism, and Missouri is often called the Show-Me State.
Any neutral person can conclude - by reading the above excerpts - that it was Indian (and their US friends) who were desperate for a Pakistani withdrawal. Pakistani - on the other hand - were in no hurry, becuase, their position on Kargil heights was well secured.