New Delhi | The Congress on Friday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over recent remarks made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan, asking what the PM was "afraid" of that he doesn't categorically deny the claims.
The opposition party's attack came after Rubio said the US "got involved directly" when India and Pakistan "went to war", and President Donald Trump was able to deliver peace between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Since May 10, Trump has repeated his claim many times that he "helped settle" the tensions between India and Pakistan and told the nuclear-armed neighbours that America will do a "lot of trade" with them if they stopped the conflict.
India has been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.
In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said much was made of the fact that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's first bilateral meeting was with India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on January 22, 2025.
"On May 10, 2025, at 1735 hrs it was Mr. Rubio who was the very first to announce that India and Pakistan had arrived at a ceasefire because of US intervention. Since then, his boss the US President has repeated that claim 34 times," Ramesh said in a post on X.
"Now Mr. Rubio himself has once again said that when India and Pakistan went to war, President Trump got 'directly involved and delivered on the peace'," he said.
"Why is Mr. Modi silent? Even the External Affairs Minister has been too clever by half in his response to what President Trump and Mr. Rubio have been saying. Mr. Modi was quick to give a clean chit publicly to China on June 19 2020 with his now-infamous line 'Na koi hamari seema mein ghus aaya hai, na hi koi ghusa hua hai'.
"Why doesn't he publicly and categorically deny what President Trump and Mr. Rubio are saying time and again? What is he afraid of?" Ramesh said.
Rubio, in an interview with EWTN's ‘The World Over' on Thursday, said that Trump is committed to peace and being the “president of peace”.
"And so, we saw when India and Pakistan went to war, we got involved directly, and the president was able to deliver on that peace," Rubio said.
