Trump Repeats Claim That He "Stopped" India-Pak Conflict
New York:
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated his claim that he stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan and told the two countries that America would not do trade with them if continued with the fighting.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.
"Maybe the most important of all, India and Pakistan, and that wasn't whether or not they may someday have nukes, like we're talking about in the Middle East, like we're talking about with Israel and Iran," Trump said during a press briefing after the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands.
He said that India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Trump said he had a series of phone calls on trade with both India and Pakistan.
"I said, 'Look, if you're going to go fighting each other... it was getting very bad, you know how bad that last attack was. It was really bad," Trump said. "If you're going to go fighting each other, we're not doing any trade deal," Trump said.
He claimed that when the countries said, "'no, you have to do a trade deal', Trump responded by saying "We're not doing any trade deal." He also said that Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir was in the White House this month. "And in fact, I had the general, who was very impressive. The general from Pakistan was in my office last week," he said. "Prime Minister Modi is a great friend of mine. He's a great gentleman. He's a great man. And I got them to reason. I said, we're not doing a trade deal if you're going to fight and if you're going to fight each other, we're not doing a trade deal. And you know what they said. No, I want to do the trade deal. We stopped the nuclear war," Trump claimed.
Trump has repeated the claim several times that he "helped settle" the tensions between India and Pakistan.
However, India has been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.
In a nearly 35-minute phone call with Trump last week, PM Modi firmly stated that India does not and will "never accept" mediation and that the discussions between Indian and Pakistani militaries on cessation of military actions were initiated at Islamabad's request
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