Trump repeats claim that he stopped war between India and Pakistan
New York, Jun 25 (PTI): US President Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated his claim that he stopped the war between India and Pakistan and told the two countries that America would not do trade with them if continued with the fighting.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.
"Maybe the most important of all, India and Pakistan, and that wasn't whether or not they may someday have nukes, like we're talking about in the Middle East, like we're talking about with Israel and Iran,” Trump said during a press briefing after the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands.
He said that India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.
Trump said he had a series of phone calls on trade with both India and Pakistan.
“I said, ‘Look, if you're going to go fighting each other… it was getting very bad, you know how bad that last attack was. It was really bad,” Trump said. “If you're going to go fighting each other, we're not doing any trade deal,” Trump said.
He claimed that when the countries said, “‘no, you have to do a trade deal’, Trump responded by saying “We're not doing any trade deal.”
He also said that Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir was in the White House this month. “And in fact, I had the general, who was very impressive. The general from Pakistan was in my office last week," he said.
“Prime Minister Modi is a great friend of mine. He's a great gentleman. He's a great man. And I got them to reason. I said, we're not doing a trade deal if you're going to fight and if you're going to fight each other, we're not doing a trade deal. And you know what they said. No, I want to do the trade deal. We stopped the nuclear war,” Trump claimed.
Trump has repeated the claim several times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.
However, India has been consistently 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.
In a nearly 35-minute phone call with Trump last week, PM Modi firmly stated that India does not and will "never accept" mediation and that the discussions between Indian and Pakistani militaries on cessation of military actions were initiated at Islamabad's request.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
