Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: The Congress on Wednesday stepped up its attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after US President Donald Trump once again claimed that he was responsible for ending the India-Pakistan conflict last year. The opposition party said the count of such assertions has now risen to 70.The swipe came after Trump highlighted ending the India-Pakistan conflict as one of the major accomplishments of the first year of his second term in the White House. He claimed the two countries “were going to go nuclear” and said millions of lives were saved because of his intervention. The US president said he ended “eight unendable wars in 10 months”.
Reacting to Trump’s remarks, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X, “Before yesterday the count stood at 68. Yesterday itself the count shot up not to 69 but to 70 – once in the opening statement of his White House Press Conference and later in the Q&A.”Also read |Nitin Nabin takes charge as BJP president: What’s at stake for PM Modi’s ‘boss’ in party“That is the number of times the PM’s ‘good friend’ and the recipient of his many forced hugs has declared that he was responsible for the sudden and unexpected halt of Operation Sindoor on May 10, 2025,” Ramesh said.At a press conference in Washington, Trump said, “These were unendable wars – Cambodia and Thailand fighting for years, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda. Pakistan and India, they were really going at it. Eight planes shot down. They were going to go nuclear in my opinion.”Addressing a packed White House press briefing room, Trump said “the prime minister of Pakistan, who visited him in Washington last year, said that ‘President Trump saved 10 million people, and maybe much more than that’. They’re both nuclear countries.”Later in the 105-minute press conference, Trump again claimed credit for ending the war between India and Pakistan.Responding to a question on how winning the Nobel Peace Prize would have improved the lives of everyday Americans, Trump said he had saved probably tens of millions of lives by ending eight wars across the world.“If you add up the numbers, just if you look at any one of those wars, you’re talking about millions of people. You multiply it eight times. But when you look at India and Pakistan, that could have been 10,15,20 million people. It could have been more than that. So I saved millions of people. So that to me is the big thing,” Trump said.Trump has repeatedly claimed that he stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan, making the assertion on various platforms in the US and around the world since May 10 last year, when he announced on social media that the two countries had agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire after talks mediated by Washington.India has consistently denied any third-party intervention.Trump also said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending wars, including conflicts between Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
