Mediation between two unequals not possible: Shashi Tharoor on Trump's claims on India, Pakistan

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has said that to suggest one can mediate between two unequals is not possible because there is no equivalence between terrorists and their victims, amid repeated claims by US President Donald Trump that he "helped settle" the tensions between India and Pakistan.

Tharoor, currently in the US leading a multi-party delegation on Operation Sindoor, made the comments in response to a question during a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations here on Thursday.

"…Mediation is not a term that we are particularly willing to entertain. I'll tell you why not. The fact is that this implies, even when you say things like broker or whatever, you're implying an equivalence which simply doesn't exist," Tharoor said.

He said there is no equivalence between terrorists and their victims.

"There is no equivalence between a country that provides safe haven to terrorism, and a country that's a flourishing multi-party democracy that's trying to get on with its business," he said.

"There is no equivalence between a state that is a status quo power that just wants to be left alone by its neighbours, where the neighbours don't agree with us, and a revisionist power that wants to upset the geopolitical arrangements that have existed for the last three-quarters of a century. There is no equivalence possible in these cases, and in these circumstances, to suggest that you can mediate between two unequals is not possible,” Tharoor added.

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over a dozen times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.

He has also claimed that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America would do a “lot of trade” with them if they stopped the conflict.

On being asked how he would characterise the American role in the conflict, Tharoor said he is "guessing to some degree” that the American role would have been first of all to keep themselves informed, conversations on both sides, and “certainly my government received a number of calls at high levels from the US government, and we appreciated their concern and their interest”.

He said that at the same time, the US must have been making similar calls at the highest levels to the Pakistan side, and “our assumption is that's where, because that's the side that needed persuading to stop this process, that may well have been where their messages really had the greatest effect. But that's guesswork on my part. I don't know what they said to the Pakistanis”.