NEW DELHI: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh stepped up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding answers on US President Donald Trump’s continuous claims that he used trade as a war deterrent between India and Pakistan.“This is 11th time in 21 days that PM @narendramodi’s great friend and American President Donald Trump has made claims about how the ceasefire with Pakistan took place. When will the PM speak up?” the grand old party’s national spokesperson said in a post on X on Saturday.This came after Trump said that Pakistan and US were set to discuss trade in next week noting that he “wouldn’t have any interest in making a deal with either if they were going to be at war with each other.” “I think the deal I’m most proud of is the fact that we’re dealing with India, we’re dealing with Pakistan, and we were able to stop potentially a nuclear war through trade as opposed through bullets. You know, normally they do it through bullets. We do it through trade. So I’m very proud of that. Nobody talks about it. But we had a very nasty potential war going on between Pakistan and India. And now, if you look, they’re doing fine,” he said.In a series of posts noting the number of times Trump took credit for the truce, which is at least thrice in the past 24 hours, Ramesh said, “Donaldbhai keeps repeating the same sequence of events of how he got the 4-Day India-Pakistan war to stop – US intervention and the use of the trade instrument to stop nuclear escalation.”“The equivalence of India and Pakistan gets reiterated yet again. President Trump’s Commerce Secretary has made exactly the same claims in his submission to the New York-based Court of International Trade on May 23rd. But Donaldbhai’s friend Mr Narendra Modi continues to ignore his claims with absolute silence. Why doesn’t the PM speak up? Is President Trump also doing what Mr. Modi does all the time and so well (i.e. lying)? Or is he speaking even 50% truth?” he added.While Trump’s recent claims have not drawn a categorical denial from New Delhi, the ministry of external affairs has consistently maintained that the India-Pakistan ceasefire was a bilateral decision, and there have been no trade discussions with the United States related to or following Operation Sindoor.
