US President Donald Trump will not let India forget the losses it suffered during a brief war with Pakistan in May last, as once again he said that seven aircraft were shot down during the recent military escalation between Pakistan and India, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Wednesday.
Addressing a dinner with business leaders during his trip to Japan on Tuesday, President Trump claimed that a lot of the wars he stopped were because of his tariffs imposed on multiple countries, stating that he did “a great service to the world”.
“If you look at India and Pakistan, they were going at it,” he said. “Seven brand-new, beautiful planes were shot down. I said to [Indian] Prime Minister Modi and I said to the Prime Minister [Shehbaz Sharif], very nice man, a very good man and the Field Marshal Asim Munir over in Pakistan … I said, ‘look we’re not going to do any trade if you’re going to be fighting’,” Trump said.
“We said ‘no, we’re not doing any deals if you’re going to fight’ and within 24 hours that was the end of that. It was amazing, actually,” he said and added. “I think trade is responsible for 70 percent of the fact that we didn’t have wars.”
Pakistan had shot down six Indian fighter jets during the conflict, including the French-made Rafale. New Delhi acknowledged “some losses” during the conflict but denied losing six jets.