Trump administration now takes claim of brokering India-Pak ceasefire to UNSC

New Delhi: Notwithstanding repeated rebuttal from New Delhi, President Donald Trump’s administration has now taken to the United Nations Security Council its claim about playing a key role in de-escalating tension between India and Pakistan following the terrorist attack near Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.

“Across the globe, the United States continues to work with parties to disputes, wherever possible, to find peaceful solutions,” Dorothy Shea, the acting US representative to the UN, told the Security Council. She was speaking at the open debate on ‘Multilateralism and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes’ at the UN headquarters in New York.

Pakistan, a non-permanent member of the UNSC, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the council, called for the open debate, apparently to create an opportunity for itself to bring to the table its disputes with India.

Shea said that the US leadership had, in the past three months alone, delivered "de-escalations between Israel and Iran, between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, and between India and Pakistan”. “The United States, under President Trump’s leadership, played an important role in encouraging the parties to reach these resolutions, which we applaud and support.”

The US calls on all UN member states involved in disputes or conflicts to "follow the example of those countries" and to make every effort to resolve their disputes and cease violence, added the acting envoy of Washington, DC, to the international organisation.

Meanwhile, Parvathaneni Harish, New Delhi’s Permanent Representative to the UN, referred to the April 22 carnage in J&K by terrorists linked to Pakistan and India’s military offensive – named ‘Operation Sindoor’ – on May 7 targeting terrorist training camps in Pakistan and areas under the control of Pakistan. He noted that India’s response was focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature.

“On achieving its primary objectives, a cessation of military activities was directly concluded at the request of Pakistan,” added Harish, subtly rejecting the US claim of brokering the ceasefire that halted the four-day-long cross-border military flare-up between India and its western neighbour between May 7 and 10.

Trump, himself too, on Tuesday, once again claimed to have stopped the recent ‘war’ between India and Pakistan, adding that five planes had been shot down in the conflict between the two South Asian nations.

“They shot down five planes, and it was back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I called them and said, 'Listen, no more trade. If you do this, you're not going to be good…They're both powerful nuclear nations, and that would have happened, and who knows where that would have ended up. And I stopped it,” he said at an event in the White House in Washington, DC.