“I can inform you that I used to be within the room when Vice President [JD] Vance spoke to Prime Minister Modi on the evening of Might 9,” Overseas Minister S Jaishankar mentioned, denying US President Donald Trump’s declare that India agreed to a ceasefire with Pakistan below US commerce stress. “There was no linking of commerce and ceasefire,” he added.
In a dialog with Newsweek in New York, Jaishankar gave an in depth account of the tense negotiations main as much as the ceasefire after India launched Operation Sindoor in retaliation for the April 22 terror assault in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir. Calling the assault an “act of financial warfare,” he mentioned it was designed to destroy Kashmir’s tourism business and provoke communal tensions.
Jaishankar asserted that regardless of warnings from Washington a few “large assault” by Pakistan, India stood agency and responded militarily, refusing to be swayed by nuclear threats or diplomatic stress. “We didn’t settle for sure issues, and the Prime Minister was impervious to what the Pakistanis had been threatening to do,” he mentioned, including, “Quite the opposite, he indicated that there can be a response from us.”
He shared his firsthand account of high-level talks in the course of the disaster, stating that there was no hyperlink between commerce negotiations and the ceasefire, at the very least from India’s perspective. “I can inform you that I used to be within the room when Vice President [JD] Vance spoke to Prime Minister Modi on the evening of Might 9,” Jaishankar mentioned. “There was no linking of commerce and ceasefire.”
The Minister added that Pakistan did launch a big assault that evening, however India responded swiftly. The subsequent morning, Jaishankar spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who conveyed that Pakistan was open to talks. By that afternoon, Pakistan’s DGMO, Main Basic Kashif Abdullah, known as his Indian counterpart, Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai, requesting a ceasefire.
“So, I can solely inform you from my private expertise what occurred,” Jaishankar mentioned throughout a chat with Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad.
Referring to the April 22 Pahalgam assault, during which civilians had been requested to disclose their faith earlier than being killed, Jaishankar mentioned it aimed to “provoke spiritual violence” and destroy tourism in Kashmir, a key financial pillar. “We at the moment are shifting to a coverage of no impunity. We is not going to settle for that the terrorists are proxies and by some means, subsequently, the state just isn’t culpable. I imply, we predict it’s very clear the Pakistani state is as much as its eyeballs on this one,” he mentioned.
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India responded by launching Operation Sindoor, concentrating on terrorist bases in Pakistan utilized by the Resistance Entrance, a bunch linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Regardless of India’s denials, President Trump reiterated in a press convention final week, “I ended that with a sequence of telephone calls on commerce. I mentioned, ‘Look, should you’re gonna go preventing one another … we’re not doing any commerce deal.’” He added, “They responded that ‘It’s important to do a commerce deal.’”
Jaishankar rejected this narrative. “Diplomacy and commerce are usually not interlinked,” he mentioned. “The commerce individuals are doing what the commerce individuals needs to be doing — negotiate with numbers and features and merchandise and do their trade-offs. They’re very skilled and really targeted.”