NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under mounting pressure from the Opposition to clarify whether US President Donald Trump played a role in brokering the recent ceasefire with Pakistan—a question he conspicuously avoided in his latest address.
Opposition parties have seized on Trump’s claims, demanding answers on whether India has quietly shifted its long-standing stance of rejecting third-party mediation on the Kashmir dispute.
The parties demanded to know why Modi remained silent on Trump’s claims, whether India has changed its longtime policy of no third-party mediation and if the US president’s claims of trade being used to end the conflict is true.
In a statement, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said Modi’s “much-delayed address to the nation was upstaged by President Trump’s revelations”.
“The prime minister was completely silent on them. Has India agreed to US mediation? Has India agreed to a ‘neutral site’ for a dialogue with Pakistan? The prime minister should immediately have a meeting with leaders of all political parties — something he has studiously avoided in the last 20 days,” he said.
Mr Ramesh said the coming months would ‘demand both painstaking diplomacy and a collective resolve’. “One-liners and dialogue-baazi are poor substitutes,” he said, “.
Congress MP Randeep Singh Surjewala earlier also sought to know if the ceasefire with Pakistan was on the basis of mediation by the US. “Isn’t the Modi government aware that the US president, Mr Donald Trump has issued a statement expressing mediation to solve the Kashmir issue? Is the Modi government going to allow a third-party mediation in Kashmir in absolute derogation of India’s stated policy? If not, why has PM Modi not controverted the same?”
Also, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary M.A. Baby reiterated the opposition’s call for a special session of parliament and said the ceasefire announcement by Trump before any Indian official could declare it “has raised serious concerns”.
