Addressing an event at the US Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif praised Trump for his role in helping de-escalate the situation with India and urged Washington to facilitate a comprehensive dialogue between the two nuclear neighbours.
The Pakistan PM was echoing former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who had claimed that Trump “deserves credit” for helping facilitate the cessation of hostilities between the two nations.”On 10 different occasions, he has taken credit for facilitating the ceasefire between India and Pakistan — and rightly so. He deserves that credit because it was his efforts that helped make the ceasefire possible. So, if the US is willing to help Pakistan in maintaining this ceasefire, it is reasonable to expect that an American role in arranging a comprehensive dialogue would also be beneficial for us,” Bhutto said.
India has publicly denied that President Trump played any role in the ceasefire agreement and consistently rejects third-party mediation on bilateral issues.
“I think the US has understood for some time now that India has a very clear position that there will be no talks with a gun pointed at our head… The problem is that we will not deal with people who are pointing a gun at our heads. I mean frankly, if your neighbour unleashes his Rottweilers* to bite your children and in fact to do worse to your children, and then says, let’s talk. You think he’s going to talk to him until he either unleashes those Rottweilers* or locks them up in a kennel or puts them to sleep. It’s as simple as that. You’re not going to talk to people who are pointing guns at your temples. It’s not going to happen,” said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who is leading the all-party delegation to the United States. The Indian delegation also slammed the Pakistani side for making claims that it was as much a victim of terrorism as India was. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, “This (Pakistan) delegation is going around saying we are also victims of terrorism, we have lost more lives to terrorism than India has. We turn around and say- Whose fault is that? As Hillary Clinton famously said 10 years ago. You can’t breed vipers in your backyard and expect them to bite only your neighbours…That’s why they (Pakistan) are now getting terrorists attacked by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, but who created the Taliban from which the Tehrik-i-Taliban broke off? We all know the answer to that, so let Pakistan look inside it and let it do some serious interior reflection before it goes around pleading innocence and deniability and everything else.”
Echoing that sentiment, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya said, “Bhutto has been calling his delegation a peace delegation, and it is quite ironic that the Pakistani delegation is speaking the language of peace. It’s like the Devil quoting from the scriptures. For a country that is trying to create fake heroes by promoting failed generals to field marshal, they don’t know what true leaders look like. Pakistan has been surviving on cheap Chinese imports, including military hardware, which spectacularly failed on the battlefield.. So perhaps it is hard for them to digest high-quality, high-calibre military hardware as well as strong democratic leadership on the other side of the border.”
Even as Bhutto and his copycat delegation try to make a pitch for peace, India’s anti-terror stand has already been endorsed by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast.
“The world was holding its breath, watching what had taken place, both in disgust and also in anticipation of the response. When you are attacked, you have no choice but to respond. The world does not allow anything else, and those responses needed to take place. We have a great friendship and partnership between our nations, and we see nothing but growth and expansion in the future,” Mast told reporters in Washington, DC.
