EAM Jaishankar gives firsthand account to refute Trump's claims on ceasefire

Arul Louis

New York, July 1 (IANS) With his firsthand account of the talks between New Delhi and Washington, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar has dismissed the claims of US President Donald Trump that he used trade to force India and Pakistan to accept a ceasefire. 

He said on Monday that he was with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when US Vice President J.D. Vance spoke to him by phone, and there was no linking of trade and ceasefire as far as India was concerned.

"I can tell you that I was in the room when Vice President Vance spoke to Prime Minister Modi on the night of May 9, saying that the Pakistanis would launch a very massive assault on India," he said.

"We did not accept certain things," he said, "and the Prime Minister was impervious to what the Pakistanis were threatening to do."

"On the contrary, he (PM Modi) indicated that there would be a response from us," he said, giving the chronology of interactions.

"The Pakistanis did attack us massively that night, (and) we responded very quickly," he recalled.

The next contact with Washington was between the EAM and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

"And the next morning, Mr. Rubio called me up and said the Pakistanis were ready to talk," he said.

Pakistan's Director General of Military Operations, Major General Kashif Abdullah, directly called his Indian counterpart, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, that afternoon to ask for a ceasefire.

"So, I can only tell you from my personal experience what happened," Jaishankar said while speaking at a fireside chat here with Newsweek's CEO Dev Pragad.

He was asked about Trump's repeated claims that he used trade to get the neighbours to agree to a ceasefire after the escalation of India's Operation Sindoor in May.

Last Wednesday, at a news conference in The Hague, Trump said again, despite India's denials, "I ended that with a series of phone calls on trade."

"I said, 'Look, if you're gonna go fighting each other ... we're not doing any trade deal,'" he said.

They responded that "You have to do a trade deal," the US President asserted.

Jaishankar said that was not what happened, and diplomacy and trade were not interlinked and operated independently of each other.

"I think the trade people are doing what the trade people should be doing, which is negotiate with numbers and lines and products and do their tradeoffs," he said.

"I think they're very professional and very, very focused," he added.

Operation Sindoor was launched by India against terrorist bases in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pahalgam terrorist attack by The Resistance Front, an outfit linked to Pakistan-supported Lashkar-e-Taiba.