ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- A former Pakistan official alleges the United States played a nuclear threat hoax on his country to end the 1999 conflict with India.
Writing in a Pakistan newspaper, former Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad said that in a meeting between U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Washington which he attended, Clinton asked Sharif if he knew the Pakistan army was moving nuclear-tipped missiles to the India-Pakistan borders during the Kargil conflict
"In my view, it was only an American hoax to bring Pakistan under pressure for withdrawal," Ahmad claimed, reports the Press Trust of India.
The Sharif government was later ousted and Gen. Pervez Musharraf took over as president.
Musharraf in his book "In the Line of Fire" has reportedly described as myth the claim that India and Pakistan had come to the brink of a nuclear war. "I can only say with authority that in 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational," the book says.
