Trump played key role in ending India-Pak hostilities, claims Rubio

United Nations: President Donald Trump was “very involved” in bringing about the cessation of hostilities in the “very dangerous” conflict between India and Pakistan, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed.

Speaking at a United Nations Security Council Ministerial Meeting on Ukraine on Tuesday, Rubio said the US President had made restoring global peace one of his top priorities.

“When President Trump took office, he made it among his highest priorities the restoration of peace anywhere and everywhere in the world where the opportunity presented itself. And it’s met with great success in a number of places.

“We had a conflict between India and Pakistan, which was a very dangerous conflict, and one that he chose to engage in and was able to bring it to – be very involved in bringing it to a cessation of hostilities,” he said.

Rubio further said that Trump has played a “critical role” in resolving several other conflicts, including those between Thailand and Cambodia, the Congo and Rwanda, and Azerbaijan and Armenia.

However, he said the ongoing war in Ukraine had proven to be an “extraordinary challenge”.

“The President has worked on it tirelessly, has invested a tremendous amount of his own time, energy, and the highest levels of our government,” Rubio said, adding that meetings in Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Alaska, along with numerous phone calls, had all been aimed at ending the conflict.

"(This is) a war that cannot end militarily. It will end at a negotiating table. That’s where this war will end. But the longer it lasts, the more people will die, the more will be destroyed,” he said.

Earlier, Trump reiterated his claim from the podium of the UN General Assembly that he had stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan, while criticising the United Nations for its failure to “even try to help" in ending the conflicts.

“In a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars. They said they were ‘unendable, you are never going to get them solved’,” Trump said during his address at the General Debate of the high-level 80th session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

Trump said some of the wars he helped end were going on for decades.

He again claimed to have ended long-running conflicts, including those in Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that. And I did it in just seven months. It's never happened before. There's never been anything like that. Very honoured to have done it,” Trump said.

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim nearly 50 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

India has consistently denied any third-party intervention.

India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians.

India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

India has been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear in Parliament that no leader of any country asked India to stop Operation Sindoor.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has also categorically said that there was no third-party intervention in bringing about a ceasefire with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.