Singapore, May 30: US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Saturday credited President Donald Trump with helping broker peace between India and Pakistan, while describing India as a key partner in Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy and highlighting growing defence cooperation between the two countries.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Hegseth referred to the understanding reached between New Delhi and Islamabad after their military confrontation last year and praised Trump’s role in easing tensions.
“You saw that in the ability of the president to come together on brokering a peace between India and Pakistan, two nuclear capable countries,” Hegseth said.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he helped secure peace between India and Pakistan following a four-day military conflict last year triggered by the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 people.
India, however, has consistently maintained that the understanding was reached directly between the two countries and has rejected claims of third-party mediation.
“I think both sides there are going to see understandable threats coming from the other, maybe some of which we see differently, and countries are going to want to develop ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) threats, but we are not pointing a finger, at least from our view right now, at either country and calling them a threat to us,” he said. (PTI)
