MEA says Indian attacks forced Pak to withdraw, stays silent on Trump’s brokering claim
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A day after breaking his silence on Operation Sindoor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed Indian Air Force personnel at the Adampur air base on Tuesday, invoking religious icons while avoiding any reference to US President Donald Trump’s claims about mediating a ceasefire with Pakistan.
Even as US President Donald Trump claimed Washington brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, the Indian external affairs ministry asserted that the decision to cease hostilities followed India’s military action.
Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said Pakistan agreed to stop firing after suffering heavy damage from Indian airstrikes on May 10. He emphasised that it was the “force of Indian arms” that compelled Pakistan. Regarding foreign conversations, he said India consistently conveyed its position, which was likely relayed to Pakistan by other leaders.
While the Prime Minister praised India’s armed forces for the strikes carried out under Operation Sindoor, the opposition has continued to demand clarity on the ceasefire agreement that followed the four-day-long military standoff, insisting that the government must confirm or deny Trump’s assertion that he had threatened to cut off trade with both India and Pakistan to force the ceasefire.
In his second speech within 24 hours, Modi referred to both Lord Buddha and Guru Gobind Singh, framing the military action as a continuation of India’s traditional values of defending dharma, but he chose not to address the claims made by Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the behind-the-scenes negotiations that allegedly led to the end of hostilities on May 11.
Opposition parties, pointing to Trump’s repeated remarks, have alleged a lack of transparency in the government’s handling of the ceasefire process and have questioned whether India had come under external pressure to halt military operations despite gaining the upper hand in the confrontation.
Modi, in his speech, described Operation Sindoor as a demonstration of India’s decisiveness and declared that over 100 terrorists were killed across nine locations, yet he refrained from mentioning the diplomatic angle, including reports of secret talks at a neutral venue, as claimed by the US.
Though Pakistan had claimed to have struck India’s Adampur air base, Modi stood in front of an S-400 missile system and praised the indigenous Akash missile system, asserting that none of India’s defence infrastructure was affected, but again did not clarify whether the ceasefire came at the cost of international negotiations.
