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Informist, Tuesday, May 13, 2025

NEW DELHI – India Tuesday reiterated its long-standing position that any issue pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir will be addressed bilaterally with Pakistan. And the "stated policy" on Jammu and Kashmir "has not changed", Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. The comments come days after US President Donald Trump offered to work with India and Pakistan to settle the Kashmir issue. 

"We have a longstanding national position that any issues pertaining to the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has to be addressed by India and Pakistan bilaterally. That stated policy has not changed. As you are aware, the outstanding matter is the vacation of illegally occupied Indian Territory by Pakistan," Jaiswal said.

On Sunday, Trump announced over his social media handle Truth Social that he would work with both India and Pakistan to see if, after a "thousand years", a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir.

A day before offering to help Kashmir issue, Trump announced that India and Pakistan agreed to a full "ceasefire" and took the credit for brokering the alleged peace deal between the two nuclear-armed countries. Trump shared the development over his social media handle Truth Social even before the Indian government could make a formal announcement.

The Ministry of External Affairs, however, refuted the claims made by Trump and maintained that the specific date, time, and wording of the understanding was worked out between the director generals of military operations of the two countries at their phone call on Saturday. "The request for this call was received by the Ministry of External Affairs from the Pakistani High Commission at 1237 hours. The Pakistani side had initial difficulties connecting the hotline to the Indian side for technical reasons. The timing was then decided based on the availability of the Indian director general of military operaions at 1535 hours," Jaiswal said.

Jaiswal underlined that "an extremely effective attack on key Pakistani Air Force bases was the reason they were now willing to stop firing and military action."

"Let me be clear. It was of force of Indian army that compelled Pakistan to stop its firing," the spokesperson said. The Ministry of External affairs also refuted having any conversation with US officials on trade from the launch of Operation Sindoor till the understanding on ending firing. "...there were conversations between Indian and US leaders on the evolving military situation. The issue of trade did not come up in any of these discussions."

On Monday Trump remarked, "I said (to the Indian and Pakistani leadership), let's stop it. If you stop it, we're doing trade. If you don't stop it we're not going to do any trade."

Last week, India launched Operation Sindoor in retaliation for the terrorist attack in South Kashmir's Pahalgam on Apr. 22. Indian armed forces struck at terrorist camps at nine locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and are said to have killed over 100 terrorists.

Following the India strikes, Pakistan resorted to artillery shelling along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and also launched drone attacks at multiple civilian as well as military locations in Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir. After over three-days of hostilities, both the countries arrived at an understanding to stop firing and military actions on Saturday. However, Pakistan drones were spotted at multiple locations in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab despite Pakistan agreeing to stop firing.  End

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

Reported by Kuldeep Singh

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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