US President Donald Trump has once again taken credit for the understanding reached between India and Pakistan on the cessation of hostilities. Speaking to Fox News’s Bret Baier, the US President claimed that he had used trade as a tool to make peace between India and Pakistan as the nuclear-powered neighbours were on the brink of a conflict that was poised to become much more dangerous.
Baier questioned Trump about his “foreign policy successes,” saying, “You had a couple of foreign policy successes even right before this trip. You picked up the phone and called two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, and you got them to step back from the brink. That was a success as you got on the plane heading over here.”
To this, Trump called the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan to be “A bigger success than I’ll ever be given credit for.”
He elaborated, “Those are major nuclear powers… and they were angry. The next phase was probably tit for tat. It was getting deeper and more missiles. Everyone was stronger, to a point where the next one was going to be the N-word (Nuclear)”.
Speaking about a potential nuclear conflict between the neighbours, Trump said, “It’s the N-word. That’s a very nasty word in a lot of ways. The N-word used in a nuclear sense, that’s the worst thing that can happen, and I think they were very close. The hatred was great. I said, we’re going to talk about trade. We’re going to do a lot of trade… I’m using trade to settle scores and to make peace.”, he told Baier.
The cessation of hostilities that Trump referred to followed heightened tensions after Operation Sindoor, launched by India in the early hours of May 7. The operation targeted nine terror sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK), in retaliation for the May 5 terror attack in Pahalgam. India and Pakistan reached an understanding on the cessation of hostilities on May 10.
Trump had already welcomed the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan, saying that millions of people could have died if the peace had not been worked out. The US President was referring to a potential nuclear fallout between the two nations.
