A mysterious night-time telephone call last week brought nuclear-armed India and Pakistan close to the brink of war at the height of the crisis over the Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistani officials said Sunday.
They said the “threatening” call was made, ostensibly by Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Pakistani President Asif Zardari, on Friday, November 28, two days into the Mumbai attacks, in which some 170 people died. India by then had declared that the militants who’d stormed Mumbai were all from Pakistan. The heated conversation left Zardari thinking that India was about to attack and led him to put Pakistan’s armed forces on “high alert,” according to Wajid Hasan, Pakistan’s ambassador to London and a close associate of Zardari.
The phone call was hoax. We are really in dangerous times, and it’s not just terrorists – it’s people like this caller. Sadly we don’t have a Jack Ryan to protect us.