USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969; US threatened to retaliate

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969
The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 6:09PM BST 13 May 2010

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating ta

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http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/323529,report-us-threatened-to-retaliate-if-soviet-union-attacked-china.html

Report: US threatened to retaliate if Soviet Union attacked China
Beijing - The United States saved China from a possible Soviet nuclear attack in 1969 by making a direct threat of nuclear retaliation, a Chinese state-run magazine said Thursday....

Posted : Thu, 13 May 2010 13:16:22 GMT
By : dpa

Beijing - The United States saved China from a possible Soviet nuclear attack in 1969 by making a direct threat of nuclear retaliation, a Chinese state-run magazine said Thursday.

Soviet leader Loenid Brezhnev was told by Alexey Kosygin, the state premier, on October 15, 1969, that the United States had devised "detailed plans" for nuclear war with the Soviet Union if it attacked China, the Literary History Reference said in a report on its website.

Kosygin was quoted as telling Brezhnev that the United States had "clearly indicated that China's interests are closely related to theirs and they have mapped out detailed plans for nuclear war against us."

The same day, Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, told Brezhnev that he had just met Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser to US president Richard Nixon.

"He clearly indicated that President Nixon considers China's interests closely related to US interests," Dobrynin was quoted as saying of the meeting with Kissinger.

"If China suffers a nuclear attack, they will deem it as the start of the third world war," the magazine quoted him as saying.

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