India-Pak ceasefire was ‘bilateral’: Jaishankar fact-checks Trump’s claim, again

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday (April 22) once again countered US President Donald Trump’s claims about brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, saying the ‘understanding’ was reached bilaterally without any US role.

While speaking to Dutch public broadcaster NOS, the Indian foreign minister reiterated that India’s retaliatory strikes on Pakistan’s airbases “compelled the Pakistani military to accept that we need to stop firing at each other”.

However, Jaishankar admitted that he himself and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were in touch with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance throughout the four-day military escalation. He added nations from West Asia and other regions were also involved in talks aimed at defusing tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

“When two countries are engaged in a conflict, it is natural that countries in the world call up and…try to sort of indicate their concern…but the cessation of firing and military action was something which was negotiated directly between India and Pakistan,” Jaishankar said.

“We made one thing very clear to everybody who spoke to us, not just the US but to everybody, saying if the Pakistanis want to stop fighting, they need to tell us. We need to hear it from them. Their general has to call up our general and say this. And that is what happened,” the top diplomat added.

The foreign minister added that only issues India was willing to discuss with Pakistan were the return of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and ending terrorism.

Trump reiterates ceasefire claim

Jaishankar’s statement comes a day after Trump reiterated his ceasefire claim Wednesday (May 21) during a White House meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“If you take a look at what we just did with Pakistan and India. We settled that whole thing and I think that settled it through trade. We are doing a big deal with India, doing a big deal with Pakistan," he said.

“I said what are you guys doing, somebody had to be the last one to shoot but the shooting was getting worse and worse, bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper into the countries," he added.

Notably, India earlier denied that the issue of trade had come up in talks with the US ahead of the truce announcement on May 10.

Addressing a weekly news conference, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, said earlier this week, “The issue of trade didn’t come up in any of these discussions.”