WASHINGTON:
In a sign of rapidly warming US-Pakistan relations, US President Donald Trump Tuesday spoke of his Oval Office meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir.
“The prime minister of Pakistan was here along with the Field Marshal (Asim Munir) who’s a very important guy in Pakistan. And he was here three days ago,” he told American military commanders at Quantico, Virginia, near Washington DC, referring to last Friday’s meeting.
The US president said he was honoured by Pakistani military chief’s words.
“And I didn’t even realize it as beautifully as he (Asim Munir) said it, but he said that to a group of people that were with us… He (Asim Munir) said, ‘This man (Donald Trump) saved millions of lives because he stopped the war from going on,'” Trump said.
“That war was going to get very bad. I was very honored. I love the way he (Asim Munir) said it. Susie Wiles (White House Chief of Staff) was there. She said that was the most beautiful thing. But we saved a lot of them,” Trump added.
Trump said he called both Pakistan and India to stop the war between the two nuclear-armed countries and again praised the Pakistani leadership for acknowledging that by doing so he saved millions of lives.
“India and Pakistan were going at it. I called them both… They had just shot down seven planes… I said, if you do this, there’s not going to be any trade, and I stopped the war. It was raging for four days,” he told American military commanders at Quantico, Virginia, near Washington DC.
Trump said he leveraged US trade to end the war that the two countries fought between May 7 and 10, engaging in one of the largest aerial combats in modern warfare.
Pakistan declared that it shot down six Indian fighter jets including super-sophisticated French Rafale jets. Later, India acknowledged the losses, though without revealing the exact number of jets lost.
“And in this case, I use trade. I’m not going to trade with you. You start two nuclear nations. Big nuclear. No, no, no. You cannot do that. You go into this freaking war and I stopped it.”
On May 10, Trump announced in a social media post that India and Pakistan had agreed to a ceasefire after US diplomatic engagement.
Trump also said that he was “honoured” when Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, who he called “a very important guy in Pakistan”, praised him for saving millions of lives.
“I have settled so many wars” in the nine months of his administration, he said. “I’ve settled seven. And yesterday we might have settled the biggest of them all, although I don’t know, Pakistan and India was very big, both nuclear powers. I settled that.”
