US ‘Directly Involved’ in India-Pakistan Conflict, Claims Marco Rubio

<p>US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed that Washington &ldquo;directly intervened&rdquo; earlier this year when India and Pakistan were locked in a military confrontation. He repeated America&rsquo;s earlier assertion that President Donald Trump personally stepped in to stop the conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.</p>
<p>Speaking to EWTN&rsquo;s The World Over on Thursday, Rubio described Trump as a leader &ldquo;committed to peace&rdquo; and eager to be remembered as the &ldquo;president of peace.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;And so, we saw when India and Pakistan went to war, we got involved directly, and the president was able to deliver on that peace,&rdquo; Rubio said.</p>
<p>Rubio went on to cite other disputes that, according to him, Trump had helped to resolve. These included tensions between Cambodia and Thailand, the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and a long-running war in central Africa. He claimed that in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda &mdash; a conflict he said had spanned three decades and cost seven million lives &mdash; the US had facilitated an agreement in Washington.</p>
<p>The top US diplomat added that the administration was &ldquo;looking for more&rdquo; opportunities to broker peace, pointing to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine as &ldquo;the big one.&rdquo;</p>
<h2>Trump&rsquo;s Earlier Remarks</h2>
<p>Since 10 May, Trump has repeatedly said he &ldquo;helped settle&rdquo; hostilities between India and Pakistan by telling both sides that the US would pursue &ldquo;a lot of trade&rdquo; with them if they agreed to halt the fighting.</p>
<h2>India Firmly Rejects Claim</h2>
<p>New Delhi has consistently dismissed the suggestion of US mediation. Indian officials insist that the ceasefire was achieved through direct talks between the Indian and Pakistani militaries, without any foreign intervention.</p>
<p>Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha last month that it was &ldquo;completely incorrect and baseless&rdquo; to suggest military operations were halted due to external pressure.</p>
<p>&ldquo;India halted its operation because all the political and military objectives studied before and during the conflict had been fully achieved,&rdquo; Singh said.</p>
<p>He added that the decision followed a request from Pakistan&rsquo;s Director General of Military Operations, who he claimed had &ldquo;pleaded for relief.&rdquo;</p>