America had no role in working out cessation of hostilities, MPs panel told
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told a parliamentary committee on Monday that there was no American role in brokering.
The India-Pakistan ceasefire, asserting that the decision to stop military actions was taken at a bilateral level between the two neighbouring countries. Misri’s remarks came after some opposition members questioned US President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions about his administration’s role in stopping the conflict.
“Trump publicly claimed at least seven times that he facilitated the ceasefire. Why was India silent?” asked one member from the panel. Another pointedly questioned why India “allowed Trump to repeatedly seize the narrative”, particularly as he kept invoking Kashmir in his statements.
Sources said the Foreign Secretary rebutted the assertions, stating that the India-Pakistan ceasefire was a bilateral decision with no third-party involvement.
On the question of President Trump taking centrestage and proclaiming a ceasefire as being brokered by the US, the sense the MPs got was that India neither involved the US in the discussions with Pakistan nor was India involved in the USA’s decision to announce it.
‘NO NUKE SIGNALLING BY PAK’
Furthermore, the Foreign Secretary also reiterated that the conflict between India and Pakistan remained within the bounds of conventional warfare, and there was no evidence of any nuclear posturing or signalling by Islamabad.
The Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two countries reached an understanding on halting all military actions on May 10.
When opposition members raised concerns over the use of Chinese-origin military hardware by Pakistan, Vikram Misri reportedly said, “It doesn’t matter what they used; what matters is that we hit their airbases hard”.
Pressed about the number of Indian aircraft lost during the hostilities, the Foreign Secretary declined to comment, citing national security concerns.
Responding to questions on a statement made by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Misri urged members not to misread the minister’s words. He clarified that Jaishankar had said New Delhi had informed Islamabad — after the first phase of Operation Sindoor — that only terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (POK) had been struck.
The meeting of Parliament’s Standing Committee on External Affairs, chaired by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, saw attendance from several leaders, including Trinamool’s Abhishek Banerjee, Congress’ Rajeev Shukla and Deepender Hooda, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, and BJP MPs Aparajita Sarangi and Arun Govil.
The meeting came in the wake of Operation Sindoor, India’s military response to the Pahalgam attack, and heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.