UK Feared India-Pak Nuclear War in 2001: Iraq War Inquiry Report

Ex-UK foreign secretary tells Chilcot commission that Indo-Pak was on foreign policy agenda till 2002, not Iraq.

Indian soldiers clean medium-range mobile cannon in Samba sector 55 km (34 miles) south of Jammu, 28 December 2001. (Photo: Reuters)

The United Kingdom (UK) feared an India-Pakistan nuclear war in the wake of the terror attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, according to the Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war, made public on Wednesday.

The then UK foreign secretary Jack Straw made the revelations during his depositions before the Chilcot Inquiry.

Before 2003, UK was trying to “persuade and cajole” India and Pakistan to pull back from a military confrontation. The inquiry declared that the Iraq invasion in 2003 was based on “flawed intelligence”.

Afzal Guru was hanged at Tihar Jail in Delhi for the 2001 Parliament attack. (Photo: Reuters)

In an attempt to highlight other pressing matters at the time, Straw said he had been preoccupied with the India-Pakistan issue on an “hour-by-hour” basis which formed the grounds for his close relationship with Colin Powell, his US counterpart at the time.

Immediately after 9/11 the foreign policy priority for the UK was Afghanistan. Towards the close of the year, following the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, the possibility – verging it appeared at times on the probability – of a military engagement between India and Pakistan became an added preoccupation for the UK government and the US.

Jack Straw’s Memo to the Inquiry Committee from January 2010

The attack on Parliament in New Delhi by LeT and JeM militants killed 9 people. During his deposition, Straw said:

The joint US-UK endeavour to avoid such a serious regional conflict was the foundation of the very close working relationship which I developed with the US Secretary of State General Colin Powell.

A detail of a declassified handwritten letter sent by the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to former US President George W Bush, is seen as part of the Iraq Inquiry Report presented by Sir John Chilcot. (Photo: AP)

His testimony is backed up by his Foreign Office spokesperson and media advisor at the time, John Williams.

The Foreign Secretary was chiefly preoccupied with trying to persuade India and Pakistan back from the edge of a war that might easily have gone nuclear.

John Williams to the Inqiury

Even in February 2011, Straw told the Chilcot Inquiry committee in person that the Indo-Pak issue dominated his foreign policy agenda before 2002; not Iraq.

(With PTI inputs.)