India was ready to hit Pak reveals Clinton

New Delhi: India conveyed to the US that a repeat of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks would force the country to retaliate against Pakistan, Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State has written in her closely-managed memoir, “Hard Choices”.

Clinton while recounting her visit to India after the attack of 26/11 in which 164 people, including four US citizens were killed said then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi “made it clear to me that there would be no such restraint in the event of a second attack”.

She further writes that the duo explained “how hard it had been to show restraint towards Pakistan after the coordinated terrorist bombings in Mumbai the prior November.”

The book which will be released on Wednesday in India, has not made any mention of how US agencies helped in investigation after the attack or the extent of the involvement of Pakistan in the terror strike.

While there is not much mention of her dealings with India, Clinton has written extensively about her engagements in the region with Afghanistan and Pakistan. She has written that the major concern of President Hamid Karzai had always been a security threat from Pakistan and not the Taliban.

On India’s foreign policy, Clinton has written that New Delhi prized its “strategic autonomy,” a factor that came to play during the 2012 crisis with Iran in which the US was pressuring nations to cut down their oil purchases from Tehran. Clinton says that she finally convinced India by assuring then External Affairs Minister S M Krishna that the decision to look at energy alternatives in the global market would be ‘their (New Delhi’s) decision, however they chose to characterise it. All we cared about was the end result, not beating our chest.”

She has also indicated that a US team of experts was sent later to Delhi by the US to help “speed those ‘totally non Iran related’ decisions” of diversifying India’s sources of energy imports.

She reserved criticism for Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom she described as “a Holocaust denier and provocateur who… insulted the West at every turn.”

The Iranian leader showed himself to be a “bellicose peacock strutting on the world stage,” and unwilling to thaw the chilled relations with Washington enough to engage in meaningful negotiations over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program — a stubbornness which contributed to Washington slapping sanctions on the Islamic republic.

“President Ahmadinejad’s second term was a disaster, and his political standing at home had collapsed.”

After visiting 112 countries in her four years as top diplomat, Clinton sheds light on her dealings with power players at the heart of some of the world’s intractable problems — and how her ties with them often set the tone in negotiations.