Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton

India conveyed to the United States in no uncertain words that a repeat of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks would force it to to carry out retaliation against Pakistan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has written in her memoir, recounting her visit to India after the strikes in which 164 people, including four US citizens were killed.

In her book, Hard Choices, Clinton recounts a meeting with then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi in the summer of 2009 in which the duo explained “how hard it had been to show restraint towards Pakistan after the coordinated terrorist bombings in Mumbai the prior November.”

“They made it clear to me that there would be no such restraint in the event of a second attack,” Clinton has written her book, published by Simon and Schuster that is to be released in India tomorrow.

The former Secretary of State, however, has not made any mention of how United States 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.

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