"I Was In The Room": S Jaishankar Refutes Trump's India-Pak Ceasefire Claims

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Monday called the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam an "act of economic warfare" meant to destroy tourism in Kashmir. He asserted India's stand of not allowing nuclear blackmail to prevent it from responding to terror emanating from Pakistan, as he shared his firsthand account of the talks between New Delhi and Washington before the ceasefire deal with Islamabad. 

In an exclusive chat with Newsweek in New York, the Minister dismissed US President Donald Trump's claim of using trade to force India and Pakistan to accept a ceasefire after the escalation of India's Operation Sindoor in May. 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," Mr Jaishankar said.

"On the contrary, he (PM Modi) indicated that there would be a response from us," he added, giving the chronology of interactions.

Mr Jaishankar noted that on the night of May 9, the Pakistanis did attack India "massively", but he added that Indian forces responded very quickly.

The next contact with Washington was between the Foreign Minister and US Secretary of State the next morning, with Marco Rubio telling him that "Pakistanis were ready to talk." Later that afternoon, Pakistan's Director General of Military Operations, Major General Kashif Abdullah, directly called his Indian counterpart, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, to ask for a ceasefire.

"So, I can only tell you from my personal experience what happened," Mr Jaishankar said while speaking at a fireside chat with Newsweek's CEO Dev Pragad.

The Minister noted that 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."

"It was an act of economic warfare. It was meant to destroy tourism in Kashmir, which was the mainstay of the economy. It was also meant to provoke religious violence because people were asked to identify their faith before they were killed," he said.

"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," the Minister added.

India launched Operation Sindoor against terrorist bases in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pahalgam terrorist attack by the Resistance Front, an outfit linked to Pakistan-supported Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Trump's Claim

Despite India's repeated denials, Trump, last Wednesday during a press conference in The Hague, again said, "I ended that with a series of phone calls on trade."

"I said, 'Look, if you're gonna go fighting each other ... we're not doing any trade deal,'" he said.

They responded that "You have to do a trade deal," the US President asserted.

Mr Jaishankar asserted that the conversation did not pan out as claimed by the US President, and diplomacy and trade were not interlinked and operated independently of each other.

"I think the trade people are doing what the trade people should be doing, which is negotiate with numbers and lines and products and do their tradeoffs," he said.

"I think they're very professional and very, very focused," he added.