In a fresh claim, US President Donald Trump said “five jets were shot down” during the military conflict between India and Pakistan in May and repeated his assertion that the fighting ended following his intervention.
In his remarks at a White House dinner on Friday, the US president, however, did not provide specific details such as whether the jets were downed by either of the two countries or if he was referring to combined losses by both sides.
“You had India, Pakistan (military conflict) that was going (on). In fact, planes were being shot out of the air, five, four or five. But I think five jets were shot down actually, that was getting worse and worse, wasn’t it?”
“That was looking like it was going to go, these are two serious nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other,” Trump said at the dinner he hosted for Republican senators.
There was no immediate response from New Delhi on the US president’s remarks.
While India acknowledged losses of aircraft during the conflict, it refrained from providing the details. Pakistan, on the other hand, has been peddling a narrative without providing any evidence that it downed six Indian jets. The claim has been rejected by the Indian military.
On May 31, Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan said in Singapore that India suffered losses of aircraft in the conflict, but declined to specify the losses in terms of number of platforms.
The top military officer said the Indian military struck deep inside Pakistani territory after rectifying tactics. Gen Chauhan had also rejected Pakistan’s claim of downing six Indian jets as “absolutely incorrect.”
In his remarks at the reception, Trump also repeated his claim of ending the conflict.
“India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger. And we got it solved through trade,” he said.
“We said, ‘you guys want to make a trade deal. We’re not making a trade deal if you’re going to be throwing around weapons and maybe nuclear weapons.’ Both very powerful nuclear states,” Trump added.
In virtually rejecting Trump’s claim of ending the conflict, New Delhi has been maintaining that the two sides halted their military actions following direct talks between their militaries without any mediation by the US.
India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terrorist infrastructure in territories controlled by Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.
The strikes triggered four days of intense clashes that ended with an understanding on stopping the military actions on May 10.
In his comments, Trump also said his administration achieved more in six months than almost any other administration could accomplish in eight years.
“Something I’m very proud of, we stopped a lot of wars, a lot of wars. And these were serious wars,” Trump said.
Since May 10, Trump has repeated his claim several times on various occasions 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.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a front for Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), had claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack.
The US on Thursday designated TRF as a foreign terrorist organisation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that Washington is adding TRF as a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).
India welcomed the US decision with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar describing it as a “strong affirmation” of India-US counter-terror cooperation. (PTI)
