Trump calls Modi, Munir 'very smart people' who decided not to go on with war

New Delhi: After speaking to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and hosting the Pakistan Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, in Washington, D.C., United States President Donald Trump said that “two smart people” had decided to halt the military flare-up, which had put the two South Asian neighbours on the brink of a war last month.

“The reason I had him (Field Marshal Munir) here, I want to thank him for not going into the war, for ending the war,” Trump told journalists at the Oval Office after hosting the Pakistan Army chief for lunch in the White House on Wednesday. “And, I want to thank, as you know, Prime Minister Modi just left a little while ago, and we're working on a trade deal with India. We're working on a trade deal with Pakistan,” he said, adding: “They (Modi and Munir) were both here, but I was with Modi a few weeks ago. He was here actually, but now we speak to him.”

Modi had met Trump in the White House on February 13. Trump had called Modi immediately after the killing of 26 people, mostly tourists, at Baisaran near Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir to offer his condolences for the victims of the terrorist attack.

The two leaders had another phone call early on Wednesday, when Modi dismissed Trump’s claims about using the threat to stop US trade with both India and Pakistan to make the two neighbouring nations agree on a ceasefire and halt the May 7-10 cross-border military offensive and counter-offensive. Trump, however, reiterated his claim later in the day, stating that he had stopped the war between India and Pakistan.

“And I'm so happy that two smart people, plus you know, people on their staff too, but two smart people, two very smart people decided not to keep going with that war. That could have been a nuclear war. Those are two nuclear powers, big ones, big, big nuclear powers, and they decided that,” the US president told journalists in the Oval Office. This was the first time in the past several weeks that he did not claim credit for the ‘ceasefire’ between India and Pakistan.

But the Trump Administration’s move to re-hyphenate India and Pakistan from the US foreign policy perspective, his invitation to Munir to the White House and his latest comments putting the prime minister of India and the Pakistan Army chief in the same bracket by calling them “two smart people” caused unease in New Delhi.

Munir had called Kashmir “a jugular vein” of Pakistan on April 16. In a speech at the Overseas Convention of Pakistanis in Islamabad, he had not only defended the “two-nation theory”, which had led to the partition of India and creation of Pakistan in 1947, but had also said that the Muslims should make their children understand their difference from the Hindus.

New Delhi later alleged that his speech, full of communal rhetoric, had provoked the terrorists to go on a killing spree in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.

Munir was elevated to the rank of Field Marshal by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government in Islamabad after the May 7-10 cross-border military flare-up.

Trump’s repeated claims about brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan emerged as an irritant in New Delhi’s ties with Washington, D.C.

New Delhi maintains that the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan and the 1999 Lahore Declaration had left no scope for the UN or any other third party to play any role in resolving the “outstanding issues” between the two South Asian neighbours.