New York: US President Donald Trump has repeated his claim that he solved the India-Pakistan conflict earlier this year with trade and asserted that he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for “ending seven wars”.
Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over 40 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.
India has consistently denied any third-party intervention.
“On the world stage, we are once again doing things that we are just respected at a level that we have never been respected before. We are forging peace agreements, and we are stopping wars. So we stopped wars between India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia,” Trump said at the American Cornerstone Institute Founder’s Dinner on Saturday.
He went on to say, “Think of India and Pakistan. Think of that. And you know how I stopped that — with trade. They want to trade. And I have great respect for both leaders. But when you take a look at all of these wars that we’ve stopped.”
“Just look at that. India, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Serbia, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Congo. We stopped all of them. And 60 per cent of them were stopped because of trade,” the US president claimed.
He added that “like with India, I said, ‘look, we’re not going to do any trade if you’re going to fight and they have nuclear weapons. They stopped.”
India launched Operation Sindoor May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.
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.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear in Parliament that no leader of any country asked India to stop Operation Sindoor.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has categorically said there was no third-party intervention in bringing about a ceasefire with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.
Trump said he was told that if he could stop the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, he should get the Nobel Prize.
“I said, ‘Well, what about the seven others? I should get a Nobel Prize for each one’. So they said, ‘but if you stop Russia and Ukraine, sir, you should be able to get the Nobel’. I said I stopped seven wars. That’s one war, and that’s a big one,” Trump said.
He added that he had thought the Russia-Ukraine conflict would be easy to resolve “because I have a good relationship with President Putin, disappointed in him, but I do. I thought that would be the easiest one, but we’ll get it done one way or the other.”
PTI
