Trump repeats claim he settled wars, including between India and Pakistan, with trade

New York: US President Donald Trump on Sunday yet again took credit for stopping conflicts around the world, including the recent one between India and Pakistan.

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 on several occasions.

Trump's latest claim comes days after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending several conflicts around the world including the one between India and Pakistan.

On Sunday, in a post on Truth Social, Trump slammed radio host and author Charlamagne Tha God, and said he (God) knows nothing about him or what he has done, “like just ending 5 Wars, including a 31 year bloodbath between Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, where Seven Million people have died, and there was no end in sight.”

“He didn’t know that, or India and Pakistan or, wiping out Iran’s nuclear capabilities, or closing the horrendous open Border, or creating the greatest economy,” Trump said.

Just a day earlier, Trump said in an interview on Newsmax that he has settled a lot of wars.

“You take a look at what's happened just over the last little while. We've settled a lot of, a lot of very beautiful wars have been settled… One of the wars India, Pakistan, nuclear,” Trump said adding that he settled conflict between Thailand and Cambodia as well as Congo and Rwanda.

“I settled that up. And I settled it up with trade. I settled a lot of them with trade. I said ‘listen, you guys are going to fight. You can fight all you want. I mean, just fight your hearts out. But we're not doing a trade deal’.

“All of a sudden they end up not doing a war. I settled a lot of wars. I think I settled averaging about a war a month. But, you know, we're saving millions of lives,” he said.

Trump on Wednesday announced the imposition of a 25 per cent tariff on all goods coming from India starting August 1, plus an unspecified penalty for buying Russian crude oil and military equipment.

The tariff for Pakistan was 19 per cent, lower than the 29 per cent announced by Trump in April. In fact, Trump on Wednesday also announced sealing a trade deal with Pakistan and said that Washington will work with Islamabad to develop what he described as the South Asian nation's “massive oil reserves.”

At a White House press briefing on Thursday, Leavitt said that Trump has “now ended conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia.”

She said that the president has brokered, on average, about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his six months in office. “It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” she said.

Since May 10, Trump has repeated his claim nearly 30 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan and that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America will do a “lot of trade” with them if they stopped the conflict.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Parliament this week that no leader of any country asked India to stop Operation Sindoor launched by India in retaliation after the April 22 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam that killed 26 people.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday categorically said there was no third-party intervention in bringing about a ceasefire with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor, asserting that the halting of the military action was also not linked to trade as claimed by Trump.

Intervening in the special discussion on Operation Sindoor in the Rajya Sabha, Jaishankar said Prime Minister Modi and Trump did not have any phone calls between April 22, when the Pahalgam terror attack took place, and June 16.