External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has rejected former U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that Washington mediated the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Jaishankar emphasised that the ceasefire was the result of direct negotiations between the two countries, without any external involvement.
00:00External Affairs Minister S.J. Shankar has slammed the United States saying there is no definite trade agreement with Washington yet and negotiations are ongoing.
00:09J. Shankar has asserted that India is a very, very independent country and said that the U.S. should understand that India's decisions are driven entirely by self-interest.
00:20He has also reiterated that there was no U.S. involvement in India's ceasefire with Pakistan and it was Pakistan who approached India pleading for a truce.
00:31Despite India repeatedly busting the U.S. for taking credit for India-Pakistan truce, Donald Trump has yet again tried to reclaim the conflict through trade.
00:41India has made its position clear that there will be no trade with terror.
00:45But Trump remains adamant. He says he used trade as a tool to settle the conflict.
00:51Trump has claimed that the U.S. is doing big deals with both India and Pakistan as leverage for a ceasefire.
01:00In the United States, you have somebody who wants to be courted in a way and there's still no trade agreement between India and the U.S.
01:09So, does the U.S. understand the rationale of Indian foreign policy?
01:15Well, look, every country comes at the world from their history, from their national interest, from their, you can say, culture and argumentation.
01:31I think, I would imagine that the U.S. understands that India is a very, very independent country which will make decisions which are driven entirely by Indian interest.
01:41Do they really? Because the U.S. claimed that your tariffs on U.S. products would go down to zero percent.
01:49Well, you know, we are in the middle of a trade negotiation right now.
01:56Mm-hmm.
01:56It's still being negotiated.
01:59So, we have to wait and see at the end of this all, you know, what happens.
02:05For some reason, both armies were able to talk to each other, initiated by the Pakistani army?
02:12Yes. Yes. You know, we have a mechanism to talk to each other as a hotline.
02:19Yep.
02:21So, on the 10th of May, it was the Pakistani army which sent a message that they were ready to stop firing and we responded accordingly.
02:33And where was the U.S. in this process?
02:35Well, the U.S. was in the United States.
02:38I mean, obviously, there were U.S. Secretary of State Rubio and Vice President Vance had called up.
02:48Rubio had spoken to me.
02:49Vance had spoken to our Prime Minister.
02:52You know, they had their view and they were talking to us and they were talking to Pakistanis as indeed were some other countries.
03:02I mean, the United States was not alone in this.
03:05I think there were some countries in the Gulf.
03:08There were some others as well.
03:10You know, that happens naturally when two countries are engaged in a conflict.
03:15But the cessation of firing and military action was something which was negotiated directly between India and Pakistan.
03:23We made one thing very clear to everybody who spoke to us.
03:26Not just United States, but to everybody, saying, look, if the Pakistanis want to stop firing, they need to tell us.
03:35We need to hear it from them.
03:38Their general has to call up our general and say this.
03:41And that is what happened.
03:42Now, Trump claims this cessation of hostilities as a success that he brought about.
03:51Not only that, he is offering his help to solve a thousand-year conflict, I quote.
04:00Would you accept his help?
04:02And do you think India can benefit from his help?
04:05Look, we've had a long history of difficult relations with Pakistan.
04:14And the reason for that is that from the very start, we are talking since 1947.
04:22Okay.
04:22So, 1947 means you can do the maths 1947 to 2025 and figure out how many years the problem has been.
04:33We've had this problem because almost at the time of independence, Pakistan sent in, you know, exactly like this, proxy people and said, it's not us.
04:45You know, these are tribals who are angry.
04:49And then it turned out there were Pakistani military people, some of them in uniform, some of them not in uniform.
04:54So, they've also pursued a radical, I would say, extremist religious agenda, which using terrorism across the border as a way of trying to pressurize us.
05:10This has been their history.
05:13Now, if you ask me how do we propose to deal with it, we propose to deal with it bilaterally with the Pakistanis.
05:19It is something that we and the Pakistanis have to settle one-to-one.
05:24And we are very clear with them that they need to discuss with us.
05:29We are open to their discussing with us and ending to terrorism.
05:34It has got to be a serious talk.
05:35It is something that we need to do between us.
05:38I think I settled it through trade.
05:39We're doing a big deal with India.
05:42We're doing a big deal with Pakistan.
05:44And I said, what are you guys doing?
05:45You know, somebody had to be the last one to shoot.
05:49But the shooting was getting worse and worse, bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper into the countries.
05:54And we spoke to them.
05:57And I think we, you know, I hate to say we got it settled.
06:00And then two days later, something happens.
06:02And they say, it's Trump's fault.
06:04But we, Pakistanis, got some excellent people and some really good, a great leader.
