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Sandeep Dikshit
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 22
US President Donald Trump kicked up a political storm in India after he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate on Kashmir. Trump made the comments while interacting with the press along with visiting Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan at the White House.
Praising Pakistan as “smart, tough and great” and hoping it “will be a great help” 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.
Trump’s statement goes against India’s decades-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 (Cong), former J&K CM Omar Abdullah and CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury sought a clarification from the government.
As India had never accepted mediation on Kashmir, “to ask a foreign power to mediate in J-K by PM Modi is a sacrilegious betrayal of the country’s interests,” Surjewala tweeted. Former MoS External Affairs and MP Shashi Tharoor said he didn’t think Trump knew what he was talking about. Yechury asked the “Twitter-friendly” PM to rebut the US President.