Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Saturday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a clear statement in Parliament about US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of preventing a war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, linking a trade deal to the ceasefire.
The demand comes in the wake of the latest claim by Trump that “five jets were shot down” during the India-Pakistan conflict without specifying which side suffered losses.
Trump has repeatedly stated that he stopped a possible war between India and its neighbor Pakistan by threatening to snap trade ties of the two nations with the United States.
Trump made the latest statement while highlighting his administration’s role in defusing what he described as a near-war between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
“You saw it recently when you looked at what we did in Iran, where we knocked out their nuclear capability, totally knocked out that… But India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger, and we got it solved through trade. We said, you guys want to make a trade deal. We’re not making a trade deal if you’re going to be throwing around weapons, and maybe nuclear weapons, both very powerful nuclear states,” Trump claimed.
In a post on handle X, Ramesh emphasized that Trump has made these claims 23 times in 66 days.
Demanding that PM Modi must clarify the conversation he had with Trump in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha in the upcoming Monsoon session of Parliament, Ramesh said all opposition parties are united in demanding the Prime Minister’s response in this regard.
“Since May 10 till today, US President Donald Trump has repeated two things 24 times, first, he stopped the war between India and Pakistan; second, he says that the war should stop if India and Pakistan want trade with the US… Now he has claimed something new that five fighter jets went down… The Parliament is about to begin and the PM should break his silence… Any other leader will not do so. The Congress and the entire Opposition will demand a special discussion, and the PM must answer… We don’t want a substitute batsman. Only the PM must answer…,” Ramesh said in his post.