#S Jaishankar# Donald Trump# India# Pakistan# ceasefire# JD Vance# trade talks
Washington DC/IBNS-CMEDIA: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has again refuted US President Donald Trump’s claim that he used trade as a way to stop the military conflict between India and Pakistan in May 2025.
Speaking to Newsweek in New York, Jaishankar, who was asked about Trump’s claims, said, “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.
“We did not accept certain things 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 added.
The minister said Pakistan launched a “massive” attack on India on May 9 night but the Indian forces responded to that quickly.
The next communication took place on May 10 morning between India’s External Affairs Minister and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told New Delhi that ‘Pakistanis were ready to talk’.
In the afternoon on May 10, Pakistan had reached out to India for a ceasefire, said the External Affairs Minister.
But Jaishankar feels India’s rejection of any third party mediation in the Kashmir conflict at a time Trump is claiming to have brokered the ceasefire would not impact the trade deal.
“I think the trade people are doing what they should be doing, which is negotiate with numbers and lines and products and do their tradeoffs. I think they are very professional and focussed about it,” he said.
Providing an update about the trade negotiations, Jaishankar said, “We are in the middle, hopefully more than the middle, of a very intricate trade negotiation…we do think today that in trade, there will have to be some give and take.
“Just as people in the US have an opinion about India, Indians too have an opinion about the US. There will be some sort of middle ground, we just have to wait and watch the space for the next few days.”
Trump often mentions the role he played in mediating between India and Pakistan to reach a ceasefire last month. India has continuously rejected the claim.
Speaking to reporters at the NATO Summit at The Hague, Netherlands last month, Trump said he ended the conflict “with a series of phone calls on trade”.
But India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misry said Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a telephonic conversation with Trump and cleared the South Asian country will not allow any third-party mediation to resolve the issue of Pakistan’s illegal occupation of parts of Jammu and Kashmir.
Speaking on the conversation between the two leaders, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said: “PM Modi stressed that India never accepted mediation nor does it accept it now, nor will it ever do that. On this issue, there is full political unanimity.”
