Musharraf was behind n-strike warning for India

Islamabad - The Pakistani warning of a nuclear strike on India within eight seconds, as reported in a British daily, was actually made at the behest of former president Pervez Musharraf, according to Daily Times.

The news report published Friday by The Guardian said Pakistan could launch a nuclear strike on India within eight seconds, an army general boasted in 2001 in Islamabad.

The warning has been described in the latest volume of former British communications director Alastair Campbells' diaries, The Burden of Power, it said.

On Saturday, writing in the Daily Times from London, Asif Mehmood said it was Musharraf who conveyed the n-strike threat through his generals to assert that it could be possible if India did not "stop killing of its own people" and putting the blame on "freedom fighters".

Campbell was told about the eight-second threat over a dinner in Islamabad Oct 5, 2001, hosted by Musharraf.

In his diaries, Alistair Campbell writes: “At dinner I was between two five-star generals who spent most of the time listing atrocities for which they held the Indians responsible, killing their own people and trying to blame ‘freedom fighters’.

"They were pretty convinced that one day there would be a nuclear war because India, despite its vast population and despite being seven times bigger, was unstable and determined to take them out.”

“When the time came to leave, the livelier of the two generals asked me to remind the Indians that ‘it takes us eight seconds to get the missiles over’, then flashed a huge toothy grin,” he added.