The Truth – Musharraf Vs Nawaz
More to Clinton-Nawaz rendezvous than known
By Nayyar Zaidi
WASHINGTON: “(President Bill) Clinton asked (Prime Minister Mian Nawaz) Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was. Did Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear tipped missiles?”
This is an account of the July 4, 1999, meeting between Clinton and Sharif at the White House by Bruce Riedel, then a Clinton adviser, who was the note-taker during the exclusive Clinton-Sharif meeting.
In an October 13 interview on an Urdu TV channel, Gen Pervez Musharraf claimed that his version of Kargil is “the truth and the whole truth”.
Riedel has written an account of that historic meeting titled “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House”, published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.
“Sharif then asked that the meeting continue just with the two leaders. Everyone left the room except Sharif, Clinton and myself,” Riedel says. “The President insisted he wanted a record of the event. Sharif asked again to be left alone, Clinton refused.”
This categorically contradicts General Musharraf’s claim: “I can also say with authority that in 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational.” On page 97 of his book “In the Line of Fire”, Gen Musharraf says this while rebutting what he called the “fourth myth”, i.e. “we came to the brink of nuclear war”.
It is highly unlikely that the president of the United States was bluffing on the real probability of nuclear war.
Actually, in terms of a potential nuclear clash, Clinton compared the Kargil situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis where the Americans and the Soviets were on the brink of a nuclear war.
Gen Musharraf claims (page 96) that on July 2, 1999, he personally briefed the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) and “actually laid out the entire military picture. I covered all possible hypotheses of enemy actions in the air, the sea, and on land”. He claims to have said in the DCC meeting “that the Indian forces despite their massive strength would never be able to dislodge the freedom fighters and NLI (Northern Light Infantry) from their ingress and positions held by them”.
The head of US Central Command, General Anthony Zinni, arrived in Islamabad on June 24, 1999. The same day Associated Press quoted Indian military officials saying, “In Kashmir today, Indian jets fired laser-guided bombs at Islamic guerrilla strongholds, preparing to capture strategic peak, Tiger Hill....At dawn, Indian jet fighters carried out four bombing runs....All four strikes were successful....Ground troops had ringed the peak and were preparing to evict 30-40 guerrillas from the stronghold above India’s National Highway 1. In two weeks of battles, India has cleared two other peaks.”
Indians did not have “laser-guided bombs”, also called “smart bombs”. They had asked the United States to provide laser-guided bombs. Earlier, and for the record, the US had declined. But obviously, Indians did use laser-guided bombs which had turned the tide of the war by June 24, 1999, when Zinni landed in Islamabad with a tough message from Clinton. Laser-guided bombs could smash high-altitude positions with accuracy.
By mid-June Indians were boasting of the acquisition of $50,000 a piece bomb to strike those positions, according to a source. Interestingly, Indians did not deploy troops along the international border sitting quietly as if they knew the eventual outcome would be in their favour.
In his October 13, 2006, TV interview, Gen Musharraf reportedly said: “I call Raja Zafarul Haq a liar if he doesn’t speak the truth now” because, according to Musharraf, Haq had attended the July 2 meeting. But Haq doesn’t have to speak because, according to Riedel, Sharif had called Clinton on July 2, 1999, apparently after the DCC meeting, and “appealed for American intervention immediately to stop the fighting....” Riedel says Sharif told Clinton he could come on July 4, leaving Islamabad on July 3. The president reshuffled his schedule to accommodate Sharif.
Musharraf told the Urdu news channel that after the July 2, 1999, DCC meeting, he went to Murree where “I received Sharif’s call in Murree at around 9pm and he asked me to reach Chaklala airport immediately. When I got to the airport, I saw Nawaz Sharif ready to fly to the US.” Musharraf claimed that Sharif went to the US and “solely decided on Kashmir”.
The visit to Washington had been in the works since Zinni’s visit between June 24 and 26. Ironically, a major Karachi English daily’s report, which covered Gen Musharraf’s speech to the media on June 26, 1999, read, “COAS: Nawaz and Clinton may meet soon over Kashmir”. It went on to say: “Talks are under way to prepare [a] meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and US President Bill Clinton on the Kashmir crisis, Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf said today....The general declined to say when the meeting was likely to take place” but he added, “I hope soon.”
The statement went on to say that “Musharraf said the US and Pakistani sides had explained their points of view during the recent meetings. They wanted to find a solution agreeable to Pakistan, India and the United States, to cool down the current tensions and move towards a settlement of the five-decade-long dispute over Kashmir, he (Musharraf) said.” If he knew a meeting was in the works, why was he surprised to see him leaving for Washington?
Interestingly, Musharraf’s book makes no mention of Gen Zinni’s mission on Kargil or any other visit to Pakistan. Zinni is missing from the index.
Even with his hands completely tied during the Washington summit and the so-called Washington declaration being dictated to him, Sharif was able to include an amendment which said: “The President would take personal interest to encourage an expeditious resumption and intensification of bilateral efforts (i.e. Lahore) once the sanctity of the LOC had been fully restored”. Clinton accepted the amendment.
After the withdrawal from Kargil, President Clinton, says Riedel, “privately invited Sharif to send a senior trusted official to Washington to begin a discreet discussion on how to follow up on his ‘personal commitment’ to the Lahore process”.
According to Riedel, it soon became apparent, however, that “all was not well in Islamabad....We concluded the Pakistani internal situation was not ripe for Sharif to take action.” Finally, when Sharif came in late September 1999, says Riedel, “he all but said that they knew a military coup was coming. On October 12, 1999 it came....”
Riedel says President Clinton instructed to “do all we could to convince the new Pakistani leadership not to execute Sharif....President urged Musharraf to let Sharif free. With our encouragement the Saudis pressed hard for Sharif’s freedom.”
Kargil could not have been planned if then chief of army staff, Gen Jehangir Karamat, retired on time, i.e. January 10, 1999, because it would have been too late to plan and take positions by February. But Gen Karamat, by sheer coincidence, found a way to get out of the way in October 1998. After his retirement, Gen Karamat became the first chief of army staff to head for employment in the United States, taking up his first assignment at the Brookings Institution.
Who gained the most from the Kargil adventure? Unmistakably, the United States. “Doors opened to Americans in New Delhi that had been shut for years. The Indian elite, including the military, and the Indian pubic began to shed long held negative perceptions of the US,” says Riedel. That seems closer to“the truth and the whole truth”.
By Nayyar Zaidi
WASHINGTON: “(President Bill) Clinton asked (Prime Minister Mian Nawaz) Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was. Did Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear tipped missiles?”
This is an account of the July 4, 1999, meeting between Clinton and Sharif at the White House by Bruce Riedel, then a Clinton adviser, who was the note-taker during the exclusive Clinton-Sharif meeting.
In an October 13 interview on an Urdu TV channel, Gen Pervez Musharraf claimed that his version of Kargil is “the truth and the whole truth”.
Riedel has written an account of that historic meeting titled “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House”, published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.
“Sharif then asked that the meeting continue just with the two leaders. Everyone left the room except Sharif, Clinton and myself,” Riedel says. “The President insisted he wanted a record of the event. Sharif asked again to be left alone, Clinton refused.”
This categorically contradicts General Musharraf’s claim: “I can also say with authority that in 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational.” On page 97 of his book “In the Line of Fire”, Gen Musharraf says this while rebutting what he called the “fourth myth”, i.e. “we came to the brink of nuclear war”.
It is highly unlikely that the president of the United States was bluffing on the real probability of nuclear war.
Actually, in terms of a potential nuclear clash, Clinton compared the Kargil situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis where the Americans and the Soviets were on the brink of a nuclear war.
Gen Musharraf claims (page 96) that on July 2, 1999, he personally briefed the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) and “actually laid out the entire military picture. I covered all possible hypotheses of enemy actions in the air, the sea, and on land”. He claims to have said in the DCC meeting “that the Indian forces despite their massive strength would never be able to dislodge the freedom fighters and NLI (Northern Light Infantry) from their ingress and positions held by them”.
The head of US Central Command, General Anthony Zinni, arrived in Islamabad on June 24, 1999. The same day Associated Press quoted Indian military officials saying, “In Kashmir today, Indian jets fired laser-guided bombs at Islamic guerrilla strongholds, preparing to capture strategic peak, Tiger Hill....At dawn, Indian jet fighters carried out four bombing runs....All four strikes were successful....Ground troops had ringed the peak and were preparing to evict 30-40 guerrillas from the stronghold above India’s National Highway 1. In two weeks of battles, India has cleared two other peaks.”
Indians did not have “laser-guided bombs”, also called “smart bombs”. They had asked the United States to provide laser-guided bombs. Earlier, and for the record, the US had declined. But obviously, Indians did use laser-guided bombs which had turned the tide of the war by June 24, 1999, when Zinni landed in Islamabad with a tough message from Clinton. Laser-guided bombs could smash high-altitude positions with accuracy.
By mid-June Indians were boasting of the acquisition of $50,000 a piece bomb to strike those positions, according to a source. Interestingly, Indians did not deploy troops along the international border sitting quietly as if they knew the eventual outcome would be in their favour.
In his October 13, 2006, TV interview, Gen Musharraf reportedly said: “I call Raja Zafarul Haq a liar if he doesn’t speak the truth now” because, according to Musharraf, Haq had attended the July 2 meeting. But Haq doesn’t have to speak because, according to Riedel, Sharif had called Clinton on July 2, 1999, apparently after the DCC meeting, and “appealed for American intervention immediately to stop the fighting....” Riedel says Sharif told Clinton he could come on July 4, leaving Islamabad on July 3. The president reshuffled his schedule to accommodate Sharif.
Musharraf told the Urdu news channel that after the July 2, 1999, DCC meeting, he went to Murree where “I received Sharif’s call in Murree at around 9pm and he asked me to reach Chaklala airport immediately. When I got to the airport, I saw Nawaz Sharif ready to fly to the US.” Musharraf claimed that Sharif went to the US and “solely decided on Kashmir”.
The visit to Washington had been in the works since Zinni’s visit between June 24 and 26. Ironically, a major Karachi English daily’s report, which covered Gen Musharraf’s speech to the media on June 26, 1999, read, “COAS: Nawaz and Clinton may meet soon over Kashmir”. It went on to say: “Talks are under way to prepare [a] meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and US President Bill Clinton on the Kashmir crisis, Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf said today....The general declined to say when the meeting was likely to take place” but he added, “I hope soon.”
The statement went on to say that “Musharraf said the US and Pakistani sides had explained their points of view during the recent meetings. They wanted to find a solution agreeable to Pakistan, India and the United States, to cool down the current tensions and move towards a settlement of the five-decade-long dispute over Kashmir, he (Musharraf) said.” If he knew a meeting was in the works, why was he surprised to see him leaving for Washington?
Interestingly, Musharraf’s book makes no mention of Gen Zinni’s mission on Kargil or any other visit to Pakistan. Zinni is missing from the index.
Even with his hands completely tied during the Washington summit and the so-called Washington declaration being dictated to him, Sharif was able to include an amendment which said: “The President would take personal interest to encourage an expeditious resumption and intensification of bilateral efforts (i.e. Lahore) once the sanctity of the LOC had been fully restored”. Clinton accepted the amendment.
After the withdrawal from Kargil, President Clinton, says Riedel, “privately invited Sharif to send a senior trusted official to Washington to begin a discreet discussion on how to follow up on his ‘personal commitment’ to the Lahore process”.
According to Riedel, it soon became apparent, however, that “all was not well in Islamabad....We concluded the Pakistani internal situation was not ripe for Sharif to take action.” Finally, when Sharif came in late September 1999, says Riedel, “he all but said that they knew a military coup was coming. On October 12, 1999 it came....”
Riedel says President Clinton instructed to “do all we could to convince the new Pakistani leadership not to execute Sharif....President urged Musharraf to let Sharif free. With our encouragement the Saudis pressed hard for Sharif’s freedom.”
Kargil could not have been planned if then chief of army staff, Gen Jehangir Karamat, retired on time, i.e. January 10, 1999, because it would have been too late to plan and take positions by February. But Gen Karamat, by sheer coincidence, found a way to get out of the way in October 1998. After his retirement, Gen Karamat became the first chief of army staff to head for employment in the United States, taking up his first assignment at the Brookings Institution.
Who gained the most from the Kargil adventure? Unmistakably, the United States. “Doors opened to Americans in New Delhi that had been shut for years. The Indian elite, including the military, and the Indian pubic began to shed long held negative perceptions of the US,” says Riedel. That seems closer to“the truth and the whole truth”.
posted by افتخار اجمل بھوپال @ 8:25 am
1 Comments:
At 5:56 am,
Anonymous said…
The grip of the Majlis-e-ittehadul Muslimeen on the community remains strong, despite minor dents.With A Member representing Hyderabad in the Lok Sabha, five members in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, 40 corporators in Hyderabad and 95-plus members elected to various municipal bodies in Andhra Pradesh, the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen is one of the foremost representatives of the city’s Muslims and the most powerful Muslim party in India and one can see the partys strenghth if it goes to Hyderabad old city everywhere u look u can see MIM written on walls ,lightpoles and buildings leaving aside Green flags and posters of its Leadership and there small Offices . The Majlis has brought lot of development to the Old part of the city even after it is said it hasnt done anything by its opponents who are mostly Ex Majlis workers.The Majlis was formed in 1927 “for educational and social uplift of Muslims”. But it articulated the position that “the ruler and throne (Nizam) are symbols of the political and cultural rights of the Muslim community… (and) this status must continue forever”. The party has roots back to the days of the princely State of Hyderabad . It was founded by Bahadur Yar Jung in 1927 as a pro-Nizam party.The Majlis advocated the set up of a Muslim dominion rather than integration with India. The Razakars (volunteers), a Muslim paramilitary organization, was linked to the Majlis. In total up to 150 000 Razakar soldiers were mobilized to fight against the communists and for the independence of the Hyderabad State against Indian integration. After the integration of the Hyderabad state with India, the Majlis was banned in 1948. The Majlis president and Razakar leader Qasim Rizwi was jailed 1948-1957, and then deported to Pakistan . The Majlis pitted itself against the Andhra Mahasabha and the communists who questioned the feudal order that sustained the Nizam’s rule. It also bitterly opposed the Arya Samaj, which gave social and cultural expression to the aspirations of the urban Hindu population in the Hyderabad State of those days.By the mid-1940s, the Majlis had come to represent a remarkably aggressive and violent face of Muslim communal politics as it organised the razakars (volunteers) to defend the “independence” of this “Muslim” State from merger with the Indian Union.According to historians, over 1,50,000 such `volunteers’ were organised by the Majlis for the Nizam State’s defence against the communists and all those who opposed the Nizam’s “go it alone” policy. It is estimated that during the height of the razakar `agitation’, over 30,000 people had taken shelter in the Secunderabad cantonment alone to protect themselves from these `volunteers’.But the razakars could do little against the Indian Army and did not even put up a fight. Kasim Rizvi, the Majlis leader, was imprisoned and the organisation banned in 1948. Rizvi was released in 1957 on the undertaking that he would leave for Pakistan in 48 hours. Before he left though, Rizvi met some of the erstwhile activists of the Majlis and passed on the presidentship to Abdul Wahed Owaisi, a famous lawyer and an Islamic scholar from Jamia Nizamia who in 1957 took over the Leadership of Majlis .Maulana Abdul Wahid Owaisi (Fakhr-E-Millat) who also was jailed for nearly 10 months after he took over the Majlis leadership as the then govt wanted to abolish the Majlis party but Owaisi refused to do so and was seen as a person who had financially supported the party when it was a bankrupt and weak one after the Police Action in Hyderabad State . Owaisi is credited with having “re-written” the Majlis constitution according to the provisions of the Indian Constitution and “the realities of Muslim minority in independent India”, and also the person who had fought a legal battle for years to win back its Darrussalam Headquarters according to a former journalist, Chander Srivastava. For the first decade-and-a-half after this “reinvention”, the Majlis remained, at best, a marginal player in Hyderabad politics and even though every election saw a rise in its vote share, it could not win more than one Assembly seat .The 1970s saw an upswing in Majlis’ political fortunes. In 1969, it won back its party headquarters, Dar-us-Salaam — a sprawling 4.5-acre compound in the heart of the New City. It also won compensation which was used to set up an ITI on the premises and a women’s degree college in Nizamabad town. In 1976, Salahuddin Owaisi took over the presidentship of the Majlis after his father’s demise.This started an important phase in the history of the Majlis as it continued expanding its educational institutions,Hospitals,Banks, including the first Muslim minority Engineering College and Medical College. Courses in MBA, MCA ,Nursing, Pharmacy and other professional degrees followed and now a daily newspaper known as Etemaad Daily. The 1970s were also a watershed in Majlis’ history as after a long period of 31 years, Hyderabad witnessed large-scale communal rioting in 1979. The Majlis came to the forefront in “defending” Muslim life and property Majlis workers could be seen at these moments defending the properties of Muslims in the wake of riots and these workers were very hard even for the police to control them even now it is a known fact that there are nearly about 2500 units of strong members who only act if there is a seirous threat to the Owaisi family and these members are under the direct orders of the Owaisi family which leads the Majlis party leaving aside thousands of workers and informers throughout the State and even outside the country far away till America and the Gulf countries.Salahuddin Owaisi, also known as “Salar-e-Millat” (commander of the community), has repeatedly alleged in his speeches that the Indian state has “abandoned” the Muslims to their fate. Therefore, “Muslims should stand on their own feet, rather than look to the State for help'’, he argues.This policy has been an unambiguous success in leveraging the Majlis today to its position of being practically the “sole spokesman” of the Muslims in Hyderabad and its environs.Voting figures show this clearly. From 58,000 votes in the 1962 Lok Sabha elections for the Hyderabad seat, Majlis votes rose to 1,12,000 in 1980. The clear articulation of this “stand on one’s feet” policy in education and `protection’ during riots doubled its vote-share by 1984. Salahuddin Owaisi won the seat for the first time, polling 2.22 lakh votes. This vote-share doubled in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections to over four lakhs.The Majlis has since continued its hold on the Hyderabad seat winning about five-and-a-half lakh votes each time.Despite remarkable economic prosperity and negligible communal violence in the past decade, the hold of the Majlis on the Muslims of Hyderabad remains, despite minor dents. And despite widespread allegations of Majlis leaders having “made money”, most ordinary Muslims continue to support them because, as one bank executive put it “they represent our issues clearly and unambiguously'’. An old Historian Bakhtiyar khan says the Owaisi family was a rich family even before entering Politics and he says he had seen the late Majlis leader Abdul Wahed Owaisi in an American Buick car at a time when rarely cars were seen on Hyderabad Roads and the family had strong relations with the ersthwhile Nizams of Hyderabad and the Paighs even now the family is considered to be one of the richest familes in Hyderabad.A university teacher says that the Majlis helped Muslims live with dignity and security at a time when they were under attack and even took the fear out of them after the Police action and adds that he has seen Majlis leaders in the front at times confronting with the Police and the Govt.Asaduddin Owaisi, the articulate UK educated barrister son of Salahuddin Owaisi and Former leader of the Majlis’ Legislature party and now an MP himself who has travelled across the globe meeting world leaders and organizatons and even in war zones compares the Majlis to the Black Power movement of America.The Majlis that emerged after 1957 is a completely different entity from its pre-independence edition, he says adding that comparisons with that bloody past are “misleading and mischievous”. “That Majlis was fighting for state power, while we have no such ambitions or illusions”.He stoutly defends the need for “an independent political voice” for the minorities, which is willing to defend them and project their issues “firmly”.“How can an independent articulation of minority interests and aspirations be termed communal,” he asks and contests any definition of democracy which questions the loyalty of minorities if they assert their independent political identity. “We are a threat not only to the BJP and Hindu communalism, but also to Muslim extremism,” Asaduddin claims. “By providing a legitimate political vent for Muslims to voice their aspirations and fears, we are preventing the rise of political extremism and religious obscurantism when the community is under unprecedented attack from Hindu communalists and the state'’. He can be seen in his speeches speaking against terrorism in the Country and says if the time arises Majlis will stand side by side in defending the Nation
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