
'No mediation conducted by any third party': Shashi Tharoor on Donald Trump's ceasefire claim
New Delhi/IBNS: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who will lead an all-party delegation to the US, took a dig at President Donald Trump for claiming credit to have brokered peace between India and Pakistan during the escalation earlier this month.
Tharoor said no formal process of mediation was either requested or conducted by any third party.
He said the Indian government has apprised all world leaders of its action against terror bases in Pakistan.
"You're aware of our government's stand very clearly. During any crisis, there's always contact with those countries that call and reach out. We have taken the same line everywhere. There's been no formal process of mediation, either requested or conducted," TOI quoted Tharoor as saying.
"You call me, I tell you what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, and that's it. Then, if you want to go and repeat that to somebody else and they take certain consequences as a result of that, is that called mediation? I don't think so. Not in my vocabulary," Tharoor said.
"But in any case, we are always a country that talks in a very constructive way to whoever, if there's a crisis going on. Our foreign minister, if I remember correctly, put it on his Twitter account every time he had a call with another foreign minister," he said.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar held telephonic calls with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Operation Sindoor and the following escalation earlier this month, but denied the US' role in the ceasefire talks with Pakistan.
Jaishankar has maintained that India will deal with Pakistan purely bilaterally and that there should be no confusion in that regard.
In his first address to the nation after Operation Sindoor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that India will not give in to nuclear blackmail by Pakistan, and Jaishankar underscored this as well.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump took credit for brokering a ceasefire between Indian and Pakistan following four days of escalation and even offered to resolve the Kashmir issue.
Operation Sindoor was a fierce military operation launched by the Indian Air Force (IAF) on May 7 in response to the Pahalgam attack that killed 26 tourists who were enjoying their vacation at Baisaran Valley, which is referred to as India's Switzerland.
The operation aimed to dismantle terrorist bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
After the Pakistan Army again targeted Indian civilians and resorted to cross-border firing, the Indian Armed Forces retaliated, destroying defence systems of the hostile neighbour.
Following the same, India is sending a total of seven all-party delegations to different countries to apprise them of the significance of Operation Sindoor and expose Pakistan's role in harbouring cross-border terrorism.
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