New York: Former US President Bill Clinton had firmly rejected Pakistan's pleas to mediate on the Kashmir issue at the height of the Kargil crisis because India objected to third party intervention and it would appear to reward Islamabad's "wrongful incursion".

The then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Clinton recalled, called him and asked if he could come to Washington on July 4, the American Independence Day, to discuss the "dangerous standoff" with India that had begun several weeks earlier when "Pakistani forces under the command of General Pervez Musharraf crossed the Line of Control".

"I told Sharif that he was always welcome to Washington but if he wanted me to spend American Independence Day with him, he had to come to the United States knowing two things, first he had to agree to withdraw his troops back across the Line of Control, and second, I would not agree to intervene in the Kashmir dispute, especially under circumstances that appeared to reward Pakistan's wrongful incursion," Clinton wrote in his just released memoirs, "My Life".

Clinton says Sharif's moves were perplexing because earlier in February 1999, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had travelled to Lahore to promote bilateral talks aimed at resolving the Kashmir issue and other differences.

"By crossing the Line of Control, Pakistan had wrecked the talks. I didn't know whether Sharif had authorised the invasion to create a crisis he hoped would get America involved or had simply allowed it in order to avoid a confrontation with Pakistan's powerful military," Clinton wrote.

"Regardless, he had gotten himself into a bind with no easy way out," he adds.