The Inter Services Intelligence Agency tried to wreck the budding relationship between Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, the then young premiers of India and Pakistan, who were willing to break the stalemate in bilateral ties, the slain Pakistani leader said in her last book.
Benazir Bhutto, in her book Benazir Bhutto - Reconciliation, Islam, Democracy & the West, wrote that the Inter Services Intelligence even accused her of being an 'Indian agent' and tried to scuttle the initiatives taken by both the leaders.
Bhutto said she was proud of her work with Rajiv Gandhi as both were committed to improving relations between the two countries, based on the Shimla Accord agreed by their parents, but the ISI was opposed to their efforts to improve the relationship between the two countries.
"I am particularly proud of our work with Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, building on the progress in Pakistan-Indian relations that our parents had established in the Shimla Accord," the former Pakistani prime minister wrote in her book published today.
"Rajiv and I negotiated a remarkable treaty, committing our nations not to attack each other's nuclear facilities. This was the first nuclear confidence-building treaty between Pakistan and India. The ISI tried to undermine the budding relationship between two young, moderate, post-Partition leaders who were willing to think out of the box to break the stalemate between our two nations," she wrote.
"They accused me of being an Indian agent. The Muslim League and Jamaat-i-Islami took up the chorus. However, time proved the sincerity of our initiative. Both the Muslim League government that followed, as well as the military under Pervez Musharraf, would build on these initiatives. The Muslim League called it bus diplomacy and General Musharraf's regime called it composite dialogue,'" Bhutto wrote in her book.
Bhutto said both she and Rajiv Gandhi established a hotline between the General Headquarters of both the countries.
"We reached a draft agreement on the Siachen Glacier, for withdrawal of troops by both sides on Kargil, as well as on mutual reduction of troops," she wrote.
Bhutto was Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996. She completed writing the book shortly before she was assassinated in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.
More from rediff