Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed - in a book released on Tuesday - that the United States avoided escalation to a possible nuclear confrontation in 2019 between India and Pakistan.

Pompeo wrote - in a book entitled "Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love" - ​​"I don't think the world fully realizes how close the rivalry between India and Pakistan is to a nuclear confrontation." in February 2019.”

The two countries were on the brink of war on that date, after India launched air strikes on its neighbor, justifying them by saying that an armed group in Pakistan was behind a suicide bombing that killed 41 people among the auxiliary forces of the Indian army in the disputed Kashmir region.

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Pompeo said that he was awakened by an emergency phone call from a senior Indian official, while he was in Hanoi to participate in a summit between then-US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said that the caller "believed that the Pakistanis had started preparing their nuclear weapons for a strike. He told me that India was looking for an escalation on its part."

"I asked him not to do anything and give us a little time to try to work things out," he added.

According to Pompeo, US diplomats were later able to convince the two countries that neither of them was preparing a nuclear attack.

"No other country would have been able to do what we did that night to avoid a terrible outcome," he added.

And Pompeo - who wrote that Pakistan "may have allowed" the Kashmir attack - said he had spoken to the "de facto leader of Pakistan," then army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, referring to the weakness of civilian governments.

During that period, Pompeo publicly defended India's right to defend itself.

In his book, he praised India, and did not hide his desire to ally with the "democracy" located in South Asia "to confront the aggressiveness of China."

India and then Pakistan tested atomic bombs in 1998;

This prompted then-US President Bill Clinton to say that Kashmir is "the most dangerous place in the world."