WASHINGTON: The February 2019 India-Pakistan conflict alarmed the White House so much so that officials held an emergency meeting soon after PAF shot down an Indian plane and spent hours calling their counterparts in the region to defuse the crisis, reveals the memoir penned by an ex-Trump aide.

The author, former US National Security Adviser John Bolton, describes how on Feb 27 senior US officials held a late-night meeting on the brewing crisis, although they had just concluded lengthy discussions with President Donald Trump on Afghanistan.

`I thought that was it for the evening, but word soon came that Shanahan and Dunford wanted to talk to Pompeo and me about a ballooning crisis between India and Pakistan,` Bolton writes in The Room Where It Happened to be released on Tuesday as the Trump administration failed to persuade a federal court to ban it.

The participants he mentions by their last names were Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, the then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Francis Dunford and the acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

`After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one. But when two nuclear powers spin up their military capabilities, best not to ignoreit,` Bolton added.

The 2019 Indo-Pakistan military standof f followed a Feb 14 militant attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy on the JammuSrinagar National Highway. Over 40 Indian troops and the perpetrator were killed in the attack.

The bomber was a local Kashmiri, Adil Ahmad Dar, who was unhappy with India`s policies and had no link to any Kashmiri group inside Pakistan.

New Delhi, however, blamed Islamabad for the explosion and on Feb 26 carried out a retaliatory attack in Balakot, which is not part of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir territory.

Independent analysts have raised doubts about the efficacy of the strike, rejecting New Delhi`s claim that they had targeted a Jaish-i-Mohammad training camp.

International media representatives who visited the area after the air strike noted that the target was `a mere school for the local kids`.

The standoff occurred ahead of the 2019 Indian general election and political analysts, both in India and abroad, noted that the retaliatory attack improved the electoral prospects of the ruling BJP party.

The Balakot strike alarmed the United States and other world powers as they feared that Pakistan would retaliate to this violation of its international border perhaps leading to a larger conflict between South Asia`s two nuclear powers.

Pakistan, however, waited patiently but when another Indian plane entered its territory on Feb 27, it was shot down.

The Indian pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, was captured by angry villagers, held in Pakistan for 60 hours and handed over to India on March 1.