Mediation between two unequals not possible: Tharoor on Trump's claims

Washington: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has said that to suggest one can mediate between two unequals is not possible because there is no equivalence between terrorists and their victims, amid repeated claims by US President Donald Trump that he "helped settle" the tensions between India and Pakistan.

Tharoor, currently in the US leading a multi-party delegation on Operation Sindoor, made the comments in response to a question during a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations here Thursday.

"…Mediation is not a term that we are particularly willing to entertain. I'll tell you why not. The fact is that this implies, even when you say things like broker or whatever, you're implying an equivalence which simply doesn't exist," Tharoor said.

He said there is no equivalence between terrorists and their victims.

"There is no equivalence between a country that provides safe haven to terrorism, and a country that's a flourishing multi-party democracy that's trying to get on with its business," he said.

"There is no equivalence between a state that is a status quo power that just wants to be left alone by its neighbours, where the neighbours don't agree with us, and a revisionist power that wants to upset the geopolitical arrangements that have existed for the last three-quarters of a century. There is no equivalence possible in these cases, and in these circumstances, to suggest that you can mediate between two unequals is not possible,” Tharoor added.

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over a dozen times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.

He has also claimed that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America would do a “lot of trade” with them if they stopped the conflict.

On being asked how he would characterize the American role in the conflict, Tharoor said he is "guessing to some degree” that the American role would have been first of all to keep themselves informed, conversations on both sides, and “certainly my government received a number of calls at high levels from the US government, and we appreciated their concern and their interest.”

He said that at the same time, the US must have been making similar calls at the highest levels to the Pakistan side, and “our assumption is that's where, because that's the side that needed persuading to stop this process, that may well have been where their messages really had the greatest effect. But that's guesswork on my part. I don't know what they said to the Pakistanis.”

Trump repeated the claim as recently as Thursday when during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office, the US President said that he is “very proud" that he was able to stop the conflict between nuclear powers India and Pakistan.

“I spoke to some very talented people on both sides, very good people on both sides” and said that Washington will not do any trade deals with either “if you are going to go shooting each other and whipping out nuclear weapons that may be even affect us. Because you know that nuclear dust blows across oceans very quickly, it affects us," Trump said.

“You know what, I got that war stopped...Now, am I going to get credit? I'm not going to get credit for anything. They don't give me credit for anything. But nobody else could have done it. I stopped it. I was very proud of that,” Trump added.

About two weeks after the horrific April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed, India launched Operation Sindoor targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on May 7.

India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

India has been maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.