Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif yet again sought to latch on to US President Donald Trump's repeated claims of mediating ceasefire between India and his country, describing it as a "big diplomatic achievement" for Islamabad.
In his recent public address, Sharif said that Pakistan is trying to streamline its ties with US as he credited Trump for "stopping the war" with India.
"US President Mr Trump has said that he got the war between Pakistan and India stopped. There is no achievement bigger than this diplomatic achievement," Sharif said.
Describing the four-day conflict with India as "short but highly dangerous", Sharif lauded the "resilience" of the Pakistani forces.
It is not the first time that Sharif and his ministers have expressed deep gratitude to the US President for his self-proclaimed role in stopping the war between India and Pakistan. During interactions with reporters and multiple public events since May, Trump has often made offhand remarks about stopping the "nuclear war" between India and Pakistan — something the US President describes as a major achievement just months into his second stint in the White House.
India has categorically denied this, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling Lok Sabha on Tuesday that no world leader asked New Delhi to "stop Operation Sindoor". He even described his interaction with US Vice President JD Vance during the conflict on May 9 and revealed how he told the Trump administration that Pakistan will suffer the consequences of its actions if it chooses to escalate the situation.
However, Pakistan has often seized on to Trump's words as the gospel truth, trying to project it as a diplomatic victory by involving US into the conflict.
Trump, who is on a credit-seeking spree when it comes to stopping conflicts, has claimed that the world would have witnessed six major wars had it not been for him.
In the last few months of his presidency, Trump has claimed that he stopped multiple conflicts, including between India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Cambodia and Thailand — and that he would swiftly end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza using trade pressure, ceasefire deadlines and economic leverage.
The maverick US President has also rued how he will not get to win the Nobel Prize, unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, for "stopping" such conflicts. In fact, Pakistan has strongly supported a Nobel Prize for Trump following the conflict.
Earlier, senior Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi suggested that his country was constantly approaching Trump during the military conflict with India in May.
He added that it took hectic lobbying efforts from Pakistan to garner Trump's attention.
"We have been thanking Trump (for ceasefire). We thanked him back then too for this initiative (ceasefire). India didn't do the same ... Trump kept on saying that he brokered a ceasefire. But Modi rejected this claim and said that it was the DGMOs who got it done," he said.
India launched Operation Sindoor to target nine terror facilities in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on May 9. The airstrikes triggered an intense four-day conflict between the neighbours, which ended after the Pakistani DGMO reached out to his Indian counterpart after India targeted critical airbases.
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