Ceasefire had no linkage with U.S. trade: Jaishankar in Parliament

NEW DELHI

In a clear rebuttal of the repeated assertions by U.S. President Donald Trump that he stopped the recent India-Pakistan conflict, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Monday (July 28, 2025) told the Lok Sabha that there was no phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Mr. Trump during the tense phase with Pakistan after the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam.

Mr. Trump has said on multiple occasions that he extracted a ceasefire from India and Pakistan by threatening to cut off trade if they continued fighting.

‘Sindoor an answer’

Speaking in the Lok Sabha on the Operation Sindoor launched against terror bases in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack, he said the operation ensured that terrorists will no longer be treated as proxies. The military operation created a “new normal” by conveying that cross-border attacks from Pakistan will draw an “appropriate response”, he said.

“I want to make two things clear – one, at no stage in any conversation with the United States, was there any linkage with trade and what was going on. Secondly, there was no call between the Prime Minister and President Trump from the 22nd of April – when President Trump called up  to convey his sympathy – and 17^th of June when he called up the PM in Canada to explain why he could not meet him,” said Mr. Jaishankar during the debate on Operation Sindoor.

Opposition intervenes

Mr. Jaishankar defended the multi-party delegations that were sent out to a number of countries to convey India’s position on cross-border terror and to present the government’s arguments on Operation Sindoor, even as the Opposition tried to corner the government on the repeated assertions by Mr. Trump. The Opposition’s loud intervention prompted Home Minister Amit Shah to remark that they should hear out the External Affairs Minister first. “India’s External Affairs Minister who has taken the oath of office is making a statement here and they [Opposition] do not want to trust him but they have faith in some other country.”

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It was on May 10, 2025, that Mr. Trump took to social media platform TruthSocial to announce a pause in the fighting between India and Pakistan, shortly before Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced the ceasefire before the media here. Mr. Trump praised Vice-President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “bringing the ceasefire into effect”. Thereafter, he has mentioned several times that his intervention brought about the ceasefire.

On July 22, Mr. Trump repeated that he stopped the brief war between India and Pakistan that started on the morning of May 7, adding that five aircraft were shot down during the conflict though he did not clarify who owned those aircraft. “They shot down five planes and it was back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I called them and said, ‘Listen, no more trade. If you do this, you’re not going to be good…They’re both powerful nuclear nations and that would have happened”.

Mr. Jaishankar said the Operation Sindoor had brought in a “new normal” in the relations with Pakistan. All issues with Pakistan will be settled through bilateral means, he said and ruled out the role of a third party. “The challenge of cross-border terrorism continues but Operation Sindoor marks a new phase. There is now a new normal. The new normal has five points – one, terrorists will not be treated as proxies; two, cross-border terrorism will get an appropriate response; three. terror and talks are not possible together – there will only be talks on terror; four, not yielding to nuclear blackmail, and finally, terror and good neighbourliness cannot co-exist, blood and water cannot flow together. This is our position,” said Mr. Jaishankar presenting the government’s policy on Pakistan and cross-border terrorism following Operation Sindoor.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Mr. Jaishankar’s speech “outstanding”. “He highlighted how the world has clearly heard India’s perspective on fighting the menace of terrorism through Operation Sindoor,” Mr. Modi wrote on X.