On the 3rd, Sharif was more desperate and told the President he was ready to come immediately to Washington to seek our help. The President repeated his caution — come only if you are ready to withdraw, I can’t help you if you are not ready to pull back. He urged Sharif to consider carefully the wisdom of a trip to Washington under these constraints. Sharif said he was coming and would be there on the 4th.

The White House and State Department spent much of the rest of the 3rd preparing. Logistics were one problem. Blair House had to be made available for the Pakistanis and the Secret Service needed to secure Pennsylvania Avenue. As any visitor to the Mall on a 4th of July knows, tens of thousands of Americans come down to the Mall to see the fireworks, many come via the area around the White House and would be inconvenienced by a shutdown of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A small group also prepared for the substance of the encounter. I led the effort at the NSC to prepare the President, National Security Advisor Samuel R. (Sandy) Berger and Chief of Staff John Podesta. The State effort was led by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, the senior point man on South Asian issues in the Department and Karl (Rick) Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs at State, whose bureau had the strongest expertise on the Subcontinent in the U.S. government. Strobe, Rick and I had already logged many hours traveling to South Asia to work to advance the President’s agenda of improving our relations with this too long neglected part of the world.

The product of this work was two pieces of paper. The first was a draft statement the President would issue if Sharif agreed to pulling back his forces to the LOC, the second a statement which would be used if Sharif refused. The latter would make clear that the blame for the crisis in South Asia lay solely with Pakistan.

On the third, more information developed about the escalating military situation in the area — disturbing evidence that the Pakistanis were preparing their nuclear arsenals for possible deployment. Sharif’s intentions also became clearer. He was bringing his wife and children with him to Washington, a possible indication that he was afraid he might not be able to go home if the summit failed or that the military was telling him to leave. At a minimum, Sharif seemed to be hedging his bet on whether this would be a round trip.

Sharif would be met at Dulles Airport, where his commercial PIA flight was being diverted to from JFK, by the Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar had a long history of helping assist key American diplomatic initiatives and also had worked with Pakistan extensively in the past during the Afghan war against the Soviets. Bandar asked for a briefing on what the President needed from Sharif. I met with him in his McLean home and gave him our sense of the crisis. Bandar promised to weigh in forcefully with Sharif on the ride from Dulles to Blair House, and he secured Crown Prince Abdullah’s support for our position.

British Prime Minister Blair also contacted Sharif to weigh in as well on the need for withdrawal. Like us, the British were increasingly worried over the direction the crisis was headed and the danger of escalation to full- scale war. Other governments, including Pakistan’s ally China, shared these concerns as well and we asked Beijing to weigh in with Islamabad. We concluded that the Chinese played a constructive role in trying to defuse the crisis.

Reproduced from Policy Paper Series titled American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House, by Bruce Reidel – CASI, University of Pennsylvania