Hours after US President Donald Trump kicked up a political storm by claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate on Kashmir, the Indian government rejected the claims stating `It was India\u2019s consistent position that all outstanding issues with Pakistan were discussed bilaterally\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump made the comments while interacting with the press along with visiting Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan at the White House. Praising Pakistan as \u201csmart, tough and great\u201d and hoping it \u201cwill be a great help\u201d in bringing peace in Afghanistan, Trump dropped a bombshell when he said PM Modi had sought his help on the disputed Kashmir region and that he would love to be a mediator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As India had never accepted mediation on Kashmir, \u201cto ask a foreign power to mediate in J-K by PM Modi is a sacrilegious betrayal of the country\u2019s interests,\u201d Surjewala tweeted. Former MoS External Affairs and MP Shashi Tharoor said he didn\u2019t think Trump knew what he was talking about. Sitaram Yechury, CPM, asked the \u201ctwitter-friendly\u201d PM to rebut the US President. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s statement goes against India\u2019s decade-old policy of not seeking third-party mediation on Kashmir. While Kashmiri separatists led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani welcomed his statement, Opposition leaders RS Surjewala , former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and CPI general secretary sought a clarification from the government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Indian government, however, denied that any such request has been made. “It has been India\u2019s consistent position that all outstanding issues with Pakistan are discussed only bilaterally. Any engagement with Pakistan would require an end to cross-border terrorism. The Shimla Agreement and Lahore Declaration provide the basis to resolve all issues,\u2019\u2019 said the MEA spokesman, Ravish Kumar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hours after US President Donald Trump kicked up a political storm by claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66487,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66485\/revisions\/66487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}