Washington: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has firmly dismissed the possibility of third-party mediation between India and Pakistan, stating that no meaningful negotiation can occur between two unequal parties — especially when one harbours terrorists and the other is a thriving democracy.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Thursday, Tharoor — who is leading an all-party delegation concerning Operation Sindoor — directly addressed claims made by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that he “helped settle” the recent tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
“Mediation is not a term that we are particularly willing to entertain,” Tharoor said. “It implies equivalence — and there is no equivalence between a country that provides safe haven to terrorists and one that is a flourishing multi-party democracy trying to focus on its development.”
He further stressed that India is a “status quo power” that simply wants peace, while Pakistan continues to act as a “revisionist power” attempting to disrupt long-standing geopolitical arrangements. “To suggest that you can mediate between two such fundamentally unequal entities is simply not realistic,” Tharoor asserted.
Tharoor also pushed back on Trump’s claim that the United States brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after Operation Sindoor, which was launched by India on May 7 in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. A ceasefire between the two nations was announced on May 10.
Since then, Trump has reiterated — on more than a dozen occasions — that it was his intervention that stopped a looming conflict. During a recent meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump once again took credit for the ceasefire, saying he was “very proud” to help bring both sides to peace, even claiming he threatened to cancel trade deals to pressure both countries into agreement.
“I got that war stopped… Am I going to get credit? No. They don’t give me credit for anything. But nobody else could have done it,” Trump said.
Responding to these remarks, Tharoor acknowledged that the U.S. may have been diplomatically active behind the scenes. “I’m guessing to some degree that their priority was to stay informed and engaged with both sides. Certainly, my government received several high-level calls from the U.S.,” he noted.
However, Tharoor suggested the real pressure was applied on Islamabad. “Our assumption is that the U.S. efforts were more focused on persuading the Pakistani side to step back,” he said.
India has maintained that the decision to cease hostilities was reached through direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries, and not as a result of any international mediation.
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