Trump at it again, says US averted India-Pak ‘N-war’

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Speaking in the US, Trump on Friday said the “deal” he was most proud of was that he was able to stop “potentially a nuclear war” between India and Pakistan through a threat of stopping trade.

In the past few weeks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he told India and Pakistan that the US would stop trade with the two nations if they did not stop the conflict.

On Friday, Trump said, “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 to bullets.”

"It was getting very bad. It was getting very nasty. They are both nuclear powers," Trump added while speaking to media at the Joint Base Andrews.

At a press conference with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon, Trump reiterated: “I believe that it (India-Pak clash) could have turned out into a nuclear disaster.”

The fresh claims come a day after Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who is in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, made it clear there was no move towards nuclear weapons during the conflict.

"Nothing happened this time... But you can't rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time because when the crisis is on, the responses are different," he said.

Earlier this week, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar, in an interview with ‘Faz’, a German newspaper, refuted the widespread claims that India and Pakistan were on the edge of using nuclear weapons during the recent skirmish.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, India officially rebutted the US claims of trade being used as a bait to stop the skirmish, saying the issue did not come up at all in talks between Indian and American leaders during its military clashes with Pakistan.

India has been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations of the two militaries.