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: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor during an interaction with journalists, at the National Press Club in Washington DC, USA, Wednesday. (PTI)
India holds enormous respect for the American presidency, but New Delhi has never sought external mediation, said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor amid US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of brokering truce between India and Pakistan following latest escalation of tensions between the two countries after Pahalgam terror attack.
“All I can say is that we have enormous respect for the American presidency and the American president. All we can say for ourselves is that we have never particularly wanted to ask anyone to mediate,” said Tharoor, responding to a question when asked about Rahul Gandhi’s recent remark on PM Modi surrendering to US President following a phone call during Operation Sindoor.
Tharoor is leading an all-party parliamentary delegation to the US to convey India’s stance against terrorism following the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor.
During the interaction, Tharoor also stressed that India has no real difficulty in speaking the same language as the Pakistanis. “As long as they use the language of terrorism, we will use the language of force. That doesn’t require a third party,” he said.
He said that if Pakistan were to “dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism, we can talk to them”.
#WATCH | Washington DC | “We have enormous respect for the American Presidency and the American President. All we can say for ourselves is that we have never particularly wanted to ask anyone to mediate..,” says Congress MP Shashi Tharoor when asked about Rahul Gandhi’s recent… pic.twitter.com/3Q5I7RXnqH
— ANI (@ANI) June 4, 2025
“If they [Pakistan] take serious actions to show they want to restore normal relationships with us, we can certainly talk to them again without needing an intermediary. So it’s not in any way a negative comment about the goodwill of people. During this conflict, as I said, in any case, India didn’t need persuading to stop. No one needed to tell us to ‘stop’, because we were telling them the moment Pakistan stops, we’re prepared to stop.” “So if they [US], in turn, told the Pakistanis, ‘you better stop, because Indians are willing to stop’, and that was what they did, then that’s a wonderful gesture on their part vis-à-vis Pakistan,” Tharoor added.
Tharoor also added that India has a much more valuable strategic partnership with the US and asserted it “wouldn’t want to jeopardise over a matter of detail”.
Over the last few weeks, the Congress MP has been receiving flak from his own party after he praised India’s response to terrorism in the past few years. “I think anybody who considers that working in the national interest is a sort of anti-party activity needs to question themselves rather than us,” he said in an interview with PTI news agency.
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“Frankly, when one is doing the nation’s service, I don’t think one needs to worry too much about these things… I honestly feel at this point we are focused on a mission here, and we don’t need to spend too much time worrying about what is said or not said in the heat of the moment by various individuals because for us the focus is on this much larger and more important message. When the time comes, we’ll deal [with it],” he added.
English (US) ·