Now, White House Press Secretary Repeats Trump's India-Pakistan Intervention Claim
New Delhi: Even as the Narendra Modi government remained tightlipped about Donald Trump’s involvement in brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on July 31, reiterated the claim that the US president brokered peace between the two countries.
At a White House press briefing, Leavitt said that Trump should be awarded the Nobel peace prize for ending several conflicts around the world ever since he came to power. She claimed that Trump played an influential role in brokering peace between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Serbia and Kosovo, Egypt and Ethiopia, and also India and Pakistan.
Interestingly, the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in the recently-concluded debate in the parliament asserted that no world leader intervened or asked India to stop Operation Sindoor, even while he and his cabinet insisted that the ceasefire happened only after Pakistan pleaded with India to stop its attacks after getting cornered by India’s military might.
Despite such claims from New Delhi, Trump has repeated nearly 30 times in multiple forums that he played a crucial role in mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan and used his trade deals as a bargaining chip. Trump was also the first to announce the ceasefire between the two countries, even before India and Pakistan did.
Leavitt’s claims, against such a backdrop, may fuel curiosity in India, where opposition forces have tried to put pressure on the government to come clean on US intervention during Operation Sindoor.
Leavitt said that Trump brokered at least one peace deal or ceasefire every month on an average during his six months in office.
“It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” she said.
External affairs minister S. Jaishankar, too, had claimed in the parliament recently that there was no third-party intervention in brokering a ceasefire with Pakistan, contradicting the US president’s claims. He said that there was no phone call between Trump and Modi between April 22, the day of Pahalgam terror attack, and June 16 – thus trying to rule out the possibility of any US intervention.
However, no one in Modi's cabinet has categorically said that Trump’s repeated claims about his intervention in the matter was a lie, or even misleading.
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