External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has disapproved and deplores former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s remarks on late BJP leader and former Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj.
“I have seen a passage in Secretary Pompeo’s book referring to Smt Sushma Swaraj ji. I always held her in great esteem and had an exceptionally close and warm relationship with her. I deplore the disrespectful colloquialism used for her,” Dr Jaishankar said, reacting to Pompeo’s remarks on Sushma Swaraj in his new book, ‘Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love’.
Pompeo said that he never considered Sushma Swaraj, an ‘important political player’ and maintained that as Secretary of State under Donald Trump, he worked much more closely with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, a close and trusted confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“On the Indian side, my original counterpart was not an important player on the Indian Foreign Policy team,” Pompeo writes about Sushma Swaraj, External Affairs Minister, between May 2014 and May 2019.
However, on Jaishankar, he wrote, “My second Indian counterpart was Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. In May 2019, we welcomed “J” as India’s new Foreign Minister. I could not have asked for a better counterpart. I love this guy. English is one of the seven languages he speaks, and his is somewhat better than mine.”
Dr Jaishankar also served as foreign secretary under Late Sushma Swaraj.
Pompeo’s book has evoked several controversies.
The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Tim Weiner says, “Hatred animates this book. It’s got more
venom than a quiver of cobras.”
Pompeo has deplored journalist Khashoggi’s murder. But he also writes that Khashoggi was not a journalist but “an activist who had supported the losing team” and criticises what he calls “faux outrage” over a killing that “made the media madder than a vegan in a slaughterhouse”.
On January 23, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, told NBC News, “Whatever (Pompeo) mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband. It is such bad information and the wrong information … This is not acceptable.”
However, for his part, Pompeo also hit back in a tweet and said: “Americans are safer because we didn’t label Saudi Arabia a pariah state. I never let the media bully me. Just because someone is a part-time stringer for the ‘Washington Post’ doesn’t make their life more important than our military serving in dangerous places protecting us all. I never forgot that.”
In the book, Pompeo also writes India-Pakistan military and aerial conflict in February 2019.
He says he will “never forget the night” he was in Hanoi at a summit “negotiating with the North Koreans on nuclear weapons” when “India and Pakistan started threatening each other in connection with the decades-long dispute over the northern border region of Kashmir”.
Notably, the development relates to the Pulwama terror act by Pakistan and after New Delhi Launched aerial strikes against militants’ hideouts in Pakistani territory.
In yet another episode, Pompeo says North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un were not bothered by the US military presence in South Korea, as reported by The KoreaTimes.
Pompeo said he told Kim Jong-un that the Chinese Communist Party was repeatedly telling the United States that the North Korean leader wants US Forces Korea (USFK) to withdraw from South Korea. In his response, Kim Jong-un said that the Chinese are liars.
Pompeo claims Kim talked about his concerns about China, which is North Korea’s ally. Pompeo said he told Kim that China believes North Korea wants US forces out of South Korea, “Kim laughed and pounded on the table in sheer joy, exclaiming that the Chinese were liars”, says the new book.
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