Rubio reasserts India-Pak mediation claims, US State Dept says ‘denial, an opinion’

New York: After Secretary of State Marco Rubio reasserted President Donald Trump’s claim that he brokered an end to the conflict between India and Pakistan, State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that denying that is just “an opinion.”

“We prevented and ended a war between India and Pakistan,” Rubio said at an open cabinet meeting on Tuesday, enumerating US diplomatic achievements in the first six months of Trump’s administration.

Bruce mentioned his statement in the regular State Department briefing that followed, and a Pakistani media journalist, using unparliamentary language about members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, said they had denied the US role.

She said, “Donald Trump is here to help make that easier and to help use this to make things clearer. Secretary Marco Rubio is in the same position, the Vice President of the United States, also involved in the negotiations with Pakistan and India, JD Vance.”

In a phone call with Trump last month, PM Modi told him directly that there was no third-party mediation or talk of trade talks as Trump had claimed.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar repeatedly denied during his recent visit to New York and Washington that there was US mediation and said that India and Pakistan directly dealt with it.

Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations, Major General Kashif Abdullah, directly called his Indian counterpart, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, to ask for a ceasefire, he said.

In her long, convoluted reply to the Pakistani media journalist, Bruce did not name anyone or make a direct rebuttal, but said, “The world is playing out in front of us in real-time on big screens and small screens. Everyone will have an opinion. That’s an opinion. Some opinions are wrong.”

“Mine rarely are, but other people’s opinions can be wrong,” she said.

“But that’s what we get to do is analyse and judgment, and the fact is that we understand in front of us every day the clarity of what’s transpiring in our world,” she said.

She spoke about how TV technology has changed since her childhood to now when TV broadcasts can be watched on phones, and said, “It reminds many of us of how quickly things will change, how much information we can get, and the seriousness of making up our own minds when it comes to the things that the world puts upon us.”

However, there was nothing on TV to show any interventions by Trump or his officials.

The journalist mentioned Pakistan’s military chief, Asim Munir, nominating Trump for a Nobel Prize.

Bruce seemed resigned to the idea that Trump won’t get it.

“I think the President has made it clear that he doesn’t expect ever to win something of that sort,” she said.

“But he deserves every prize. He deserves this one for the Abraham Accords,” she said. “There are many things he deserves, and I don’t know in this world whether he would get them.”

She added, “But what he has received is the biggest prize of all, which is the presidency of the United States.”

–IANS