LONDON:
Pakistan could launch a nuclear strike on India within eight seconds,
claimed an army general in Islamabad in 2001, a warning that is
described in the latest volume of diaries by a key aide of the UK's
former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The general asked Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell, to remind India of Pakistan's nuclear capability amid fears that Delhi was "determined to take them out". Britain became so concerned about the threat that Blair's senior foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, warned in a paper that Pakistan was prepared to "go nuclear".
The warnings are relayed by Campbell in his latest diaries, 'The Burden of Power', which are being serialized in the Guardian on Saturday and Monday.
The warnings came during a visit by Blair to the Indian subcontinent after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Campbell was told about the eight-second threat over a dinner in Islamabad on October 5, 2001 hosted by Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan's president.
Campbell writes, "At dinner I was between two five-star generals who spent most of the time listing atrocities for which they held the Indians responsible, killing their own people and trying to blame 'freedom fighters'. When the time came to leave, the livelier of the two asked me to remind the Indians, 'It takes us eight seconds to get the missiles over'."
Blair visited Pakistan as Britain and the US attempted to shore up support in Islamabad before the bombing of Afghanistan, which started in October, 2001.
The general asked Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell, to remind India of Pakistan's nuclear capability amid fears that Delhi was "determined to take them out". Britain became so concerned about the threat that Blair's senior foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, warned in a paper that Pakistan was prepared to "go nuclear".
The warnings are relayed by Campbell in his latest diaries, 'The Burden of Power', which are being serialized in the Guardian on Saturday and Monday.
The warnings came during a visit by Blair to the Indian subcontinent after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Campbell was told about the eight-second threat over a dinner in Islamabad on October 5, 2001 hosted by Pervez Musharraf, then Pakistan's president.
Campbell writes, "At dinner I was between two five-star generals who spent most of the time listing atrocities for which they held the Indians responsible, killing their own people and trying to blame 'freedom fighters'. When the time came to leave, the livelier of the two asked me to remind the Indians, 'It takes us eight seconds to get the missiles over'."
Blair visited Pakistan as Britain and the US attempted to shore up support in Islamabad before the bombing of Afghanistan, which started in October, 2001.
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