'I was in the room': Jaishankar rejects US President's India-Pakistan ceasefire claim
PTC News Desk: The External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday rejected US President Donald Trump's claims of brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. He also said that Pahalgam attack was an act of economic warfare to sabotage Kashmir's tourism asserting that India has made it clear that it will not allow nuclear blackmail to prevent it from responding to terror orchestrated by Pakistan.
India has had a string of terrorist attacks over the years emanating from Pakistan and in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam Terror Attack, there was a sentiment in the country that “enough is enough,” Jaishankar said on Monday.
“So we decided that we cannot let terrorists function with impunity. The idea that they are on that side of the border, and that, therefore, sort of prevents retribution, I think, that's a proposition that needs to be challenged and that is what we did,” he said.
Meanwhile, in an exclusive chat with Newsweek in New York, the minister dismissed the US President's claim of using trade to persuade India and Pakistan to accept a ceasefire following days long military escalation.
He revealed he was with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when US Vice President JD 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...We did not accept certain things, and the Prime Minister was impervious to what the Pakistanis were threatening to do," Jaishankar said.
- PTC NEWS
