NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, May 12: President Donald Trump today reiterated his claim that his administration stopped a “nuclear conflict” between India and Pakistan, telling the South Asian neighbours that America will do a “lot of trade” with them if they end hostilities.
“On Saturday, my administration helped broker a full and immediate ceasefire, I think, a permanent one between India and Pakistan, ending a dangerous conflict of two nations with lots of nuclear weapons,” Trump said at the start of a press conference in the White House where he announced that he will set 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower cost of prescription drugs.
He started the briefing by describing “the historic events that took place over the last few days” in the Indian subcontinent.
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India and Pakistan reached an understanding on Saturday to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.
Trump said that India and Pakistan “were going at it hot and heavy, and it was seemingly not going to stop.”
“I’m very proud to let you know that the leadership of India and Pakistan was unwavering, powerful, but unwavering in both cases, having these they really were from the standpoint of having the strength and the wisdom and fortitude to fully know and to understand the gravity of the situation,” Trump said.
The US President said he told India and Pakistan that America will do “a lot of trade” with them if they stop the conflict.
“And we helped a lot, and we helped also with trade. I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys. Let’s stop it. Let’s stop it. If you stop it, we’re doing trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade’.”
Trump added that “People have never really used trade the way I used it, that I can tell you. And all of a sudden they (India and Pakistan) said, ‘I think we’re going to stop.'”
“And they have, and they did it for a lot of reasons, but trade is a big one. We’re going to do a lot of trade with Pakistan. We’re going to do a lot of trade with India. We’re negotiating with India right now. We’re going to be soon negotiating with Pakistan, and we stopped a nuclear conflict,” Trump said.
“I think it … could have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people could have been killed. So I’m very proud of that. I also want to thank Vice President (J D) Vance and Secretary of State (Marco) Rubio for their work and efforts, they worked very hard on that,” Trump said.
Trump went on to say that “we did some great things with trade with India and Pakistan. Really helped the situation. Very heated situation. Could have lost millions of people, more than millions, I mean, many millions of people. And they want to do business with America, but we never used our powers that way. Never knew how. We never had people that knew how to do that.” (PTI)
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