Chandigarh, May 13 (UNI) Congress MP from Chandigarh Manish Tewari on Tuesday said that "third party mediation" between India and Pakistan was a reality, the only difference now was that US President Donald Trump was taking credit openly.
In a long tweet, he said, "Call it by whatever name -- back channelling , brokering, mediating , arbitrating," adding that from 1947-1972 Indo Pakistan ties or lack of them whenever they reached a flashpoint were undergirded by UNSC resolutions
He said Trump was only stating "the facts as they were". “If you were to rewind to whenever there has been a flashpoint in the India-Pakistan dynamic, there has been back-channelling or third-party mediation. You can use whichever terminology gives you a more respectable fig leaf," Tewari wrote.
He said that in 1990, there was the Robert Gates mission when Pakistan started flashing the nuclear word and added that during Kargil in 1999, there was back-channelling. Nawaz Sharif landed up at the White House uninvited and unannounced.
The Congress MP said that subsequently, there was a ceasefire between India and Pakistan on India’s terms.
He said that in 2001-02, in the middle of mobilisation for Operation Parakram, when the Kaluchak massacre took place, where the families of armed forces personnel were slaughtered by Pakistani terrorists, there again was very active back-channelling led by the US.
Tewari said in 2008, when the 26/11 attacks took place, there must have been back-channelling to try and see that things remain under a modicum of restraint.
He said that the same thing happened in 2016 with the Uri surgical strikes.
According to Tewari, the difference between the back-channelling that took place earlier and between 2019 and 2025 was that it was quiet. The people who were trying to temper down the situation would not publicly claim credit for it. The difference now was that Trump was claiming the credit upfront.
Tewari, further said that in 2019, at a press conference in Hanoi, when his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed, Trump announced that there was good news from India and that India and Pakistan were going to pull back and both India and Pakistan did announce a ceasefire.
Trump said the same thing on May 10: he announced a ceasefire with a follow-up statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the guns did start falling silent between India and Pakistan, Tewari argued.
"So, whether you like it or not, third-party mediation, notwithstanding the Simla Agreement, is a reality. You may not want to accept this reality, but this is a reality," said the Congress MP, adding that third parties "do get into the act when missiles start flying between two de facto nuclear weapon states."
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