WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has said that his intervention stopped the India-Pakistan conflict from spiralling into nuclear war by leveraging trade.
In an interview with Fox News, Donald Trump said Pakistan and India were stuck in a tit-for-tat cycle of fighting.
Trump termed it a foreign policy success – “a bigger success than I would be ever given credit for.”
“Those are major nuclear powers and they were angry. The next phase was probably…you see where it was getting.”
He said the conflict could have turned “nasty” had he not jumped in to secure a ceasefire.
Talking about the possibility of a nuclear conflict, Trump said India and Pakistan were very close to a nuclear war. “And I said we’re gonna talk about trade. We’re gonna do a lot of trade…don’t forget Iran wants to trade with us,” he said.
The US president said he had a great conversation with Pakistan and wanted to do trade with them.
He also praised products made in Pakistan and said he would be more than happy to do trade which according to him was still not large enough. “Ohh…they would love to trade…they would love to trade, they are brilliant people…they make brilliant products.”
Previously, the US president told US troops at a base in Qatar during a Gulf tour that Pakistan and India were happy with the ceasefire. He told them that hostilities between Pakistan and India had been settled after he urged the two countries to focus on trade instead of war.
The nuclear-armed neighbours halted their worst fighting in nearly three decades after agreeing to a ceasefire on May 10, following diplomacy and pressure from the United States.
Pakistan welcomed Trump’s role in stopping the conflict and said India had approached the US for a ceasefire.
Trump blasts Supreme Court over block on deportations
US President Donald Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court after it blocked his bid to resume deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, saying the justices are “not allowing me to do what I was elected to do.”
Trump’s berating of the high court, in a post on Truth Social, came after it dealt another setback to his attempt to swiftly expel alleged Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members using an obscure wartime law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
Trump has been at loggerheads with the judiciary ever since he returned to the White House, venting his fury at numerous court rulings at various levels that have frozen his executive orders on multiple issues.
In a 7-2 decision, the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump, blocked his bid to use the AEA to carry out further deportations of TdA members, saying they were not being given enough time to legally contest their removal.
Trump, who campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants, said the Supreme Court decision means the government will have to go through a “long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process” to expel “murderers, drug dealers (and) gang members.”
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do,” he said. “This is a bad and dangerous day for America!”
Trump invoked the AEA, which was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II, in March to deport a first group of alleged TdA members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process.
Attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said their clients were not gang members, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.
The Supreme Court intervened on April 19 to temporarily block further deportations of undocumented Venezuelan migrants, saying they must be afforded due process.
In Friday’s unsigned order, the court paused plans to deport another group of detainees held in Texas, saying they were not being given enough time to mount a meaningful legal challenge to their expulsion.
“Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the justices said.
