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- The full dimensions of the recent crisis between India
and Pakistan over Kashmir are only now coming to light, the WASHINGTON
POST is set to report on Monday.
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- According to publishing sources, the paper is set to
quote senior Clinton administration officials: the latest conflict over
Kashmir came much closer to full-scale war than was publicly acknowledged
at the time and raised very real fears that one or both countries would
resort to using variants of the nuclear devices each tested last year.
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- The POST'S John Lancaster quotes a senior administration
official close to the action: "This is one of the most dangerous situations
on the face of the earth... It was very, very easy to imagine how this
crisis... could have escalated out of control, including in a way that
could have brought in nuclear weapons, without either party consciously
deciding that it wanted to go to nuclear war."
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- The tension piqued two months ago as Pakistani and Indian
forces intensified their fighting over the province of Kashmir -- which
both sides claim as their own.
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- "India, it seemed, was preparing to invade its neighbor."
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- According to the paper, "President Clinton helped
avert that prospect during his widely reported Independence Day meeting
with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who agreed after hours of tense
discussions to withdraw the forces that had triggered the flare-up in early
May."
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- Even U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott left
the Hamptons vacation scene to stop the potential annihilation.
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