US President Donald Trump on Friday repeated his claim about leveraging trade to get India and Pakistan to agree to a “ceasefire”, seemingly unaffected by New Delhi’s denials of any third-party intervention.
Trump’s comments on Friday, made twice at separate media interactions, prompted the Congress to once again ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “speak up”.
While India insists that the two countries agreed to stop hostilities at a meeting of their directors-general of military operations (DGMOs), the external affairs ministry has sidestepped the question whether New Delhi has raised the subject of Trump’s claims with Washington.
Congress communications head Jairam Ramesh shared three videos from Friday, counting the last as the 11th time Trump had claimed to have intervened to pull India and Pakistan back from the edge of a full-blown conflict.
“The equivalence of India and Pakistan gets reiterated yet again,” Ramesh said.
“But Donaldbhai’s friend Mr. Narendra Modi continues to ignore his claims with absolute silence. Why doesn’t the PM speak up? Is President Trump also doing what Mr. Modi does all the time and so well (i.e. lying)? Or is he speaking even 50% truth?”
In the first instance that Trump made the claim on Friday, he was reading out from a prepared text as he addressed the media at the Oval Office.
“We stopped India and Pakistan from fighting. I believe that could have turned out into a nuclear disaster, and I want to thank the leaders of India and Pakistan, and I want to thank my people,” he said.
“Also, we talked trade. And, we said we can’t trade with people that are shooting at each other and potentially using nuclear weapons. They’re great leaders in those countries, and they understood and they agreed, and that all stopped….”
Later in the evening, Trump told reporters: “I think the deal I’m most proud of is the fact that we’re dealing with India, we’re dealing with Pakistan, and we were able to stop potentially a nuclear war through trade as opposed (to) through bullets."
Trump added: “You know, normally they do it through bullets. We do it through trade. So I’m very proud of that. Nobody talks about it. But we had a very nasty potential war going on between Pakistan and India. And now, if you look, they’re doing fine.”
During the same interaction, Trump referred to a Pakistani delegation due in Washington next week for trade talks, and said the US was close to making a deal with India.
“And I wouldn’t have any interest in making a deal with either if they were going to be at war with each other. I would not and I let them know,” he said.
Earlier this week, asked about US commerce secretary making the same claim in a court filing, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stuck to India’s consistent position on the subject.
“From the time Operation Sindoor commenced on 7th May till the understanding on cessation of firing and military action on 10th May, there were conversations between Indian and US leaders on the evolving military situation,” Jaiswal said.
“The issue of trade or tariff did not come up in any of those discussions. (The) external affairs minister has also made (it) clear that the cessation of firing was decided upon through direct contacts between the DGMOs of India and Pakistan.”