US President Donald Trump on Wednesday again credited Field Marshal Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Syed Asim Munir for helping prevent a nuclear conflict with India.

 

Speaking at a press conference in The Hague, where the President was attending a NATO summit, President Trump said that he persuaded Islamabad and New Delhi to back down from military strikes by linking peace to trade. 

 

Explaining how he helped defuse tensions across the globe from Ukraine to Serbia, President Trump stressed that the "most important” of these conflicts was last month's face-off between arch-rival India and Pakistan.

 

“And that was not whether or not they may someday have nukes, like we are talking about the Middle East, like we are talking about with Israel and Iran. This is, they have nuclear weapons,” he said.

 

“I ended that with a series of phone calls on trade. I said, look, if you are going to be fighting each other... It was getting very bad — you know how bad that last attack was. It was very bad. If you are really going to go fighting with each other, we are not going to do any trade. They said, ‘No, no. No, you have to do a trade deal,” the US president said, referring to recent tensions between the two South Asian nuclear-armed neighbours.

He praised Army Chief Munir in glowing terms. Describing last week’s conversation with him, President Trump said, “In fact, I had the General — he was really very impressive — the general from Pakistan was in my office last week. You know Prime Minister Modi is a great friend of mine. He is a great gentleman. He is a great man. And I got them to reason. I said, ‘We are not doing any trade deal if you are going to be fighting.”

“And you know what? They [Pakistan-India] said, ‘No, [they] want to do a trade deal.’ And we stopped the nuclear war,” Trump concluded.

 

This is the upteenth time Trump has taken credit on record for stopping the clashes between India and Pakistan. 

 

Following the conflict between Islamabad and New Delhi in May, the COAS met with President Trump at the White House’s Cabinet Room for lunch last week, making Field Marshal Munir the first COAS to hold a one-on-one meeting with a sitting US president.

 

After the meeting, President Trump interacted with reporters, saying, “I was honoured to meet him (Field Marshal Munir).”