External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar dismissed the claims of US President Donald Trump that he used trade to force India and Pakistan to accept a ceasefire, as he shared his firsthand account of the talks between New Delhi and Washington before negotiating with Islamabad.
In an exclusive chat with Newsweek in New York, the Minister revealed he was with Prime Minister Narendra Modi when US Vice President JD Vance spoke to him by phone, and there was no linking of trade and ceasefire as far as India was concerned.
'I was in the room when...': Jaishankar
"I can tell you that I was in the room when Vice President Vance spoke to Prime Minister Modi on the night of May 9, saying that the Pakistanis would launch a very massive assault on India. We did not accept certain things, and the Prime Minister was impervious to what the Pakistanis were threatening to do," Jaishankar said.
"On the contrary, he (PM Modi) indicated that there would be a response from us," he said, giving the chronology of interactions.
Jaishankar recalled that on the night of May 9, Pakistan launched a massive attack against India. However, he emphasised that the Indian armed forces responded swiftly and decisively. "The Pakistanis did attack us massively that night, (and) we responded very quickly," he recalled.
The next contact with Washington was between the EAM and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio the next morning, with Rubio "telling me that Pakistanis were ready to talk." Later that afternoon, Pakistan's Director General of Military Operations, Major General Kashif Abdullah, directly called his Indian counterpart, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, to ask for a ceasefire.
"So, I can only tell you from my personal experience what happened," Jaishankar said.
Pahalgam killing an 'act of warfare'
Jaishankar called the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pehalgam an "act of economic warfare" meant to destroy tourism in Kashmir. "It was an act of economic warfare. It was meant to destroy tourism in Kashmir, which was the mainstay of the economy. It was also meant to provoke religious violence because people were asked to identify their faith before they were killed," he said.
"So we decided that we cannot let terrorists function with impunity. The idea that they are on that side of the border, and that, therefore, sort of prevents retribution, I think, that's a proposition that needs to be challenged, and that is what we did," the Minister added.
He asserted India's stand of not allowing nuclear blackmail to prevent it from responding to terror emanating from Pakistan. "We are not going to yield to nuclear blackmail, that you know there could be escalation, and therefore we should not do anything," Jaishankar said.
India launched Operation Sindoor against terrorist bases in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pahalgam terrorist attack by the Resistance Front, an outfit linked to Pakistan-supported Lashkar-e-Taiba.
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