US president Donald Trump has reacted to the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, saying that the fight between India and Pakistan has been going on for a thousand years.
India and Pakistan were formed 77 years ago.
Aboard Air Force One on the way to Rome, Trump was asked by a reporter on tensions between India and Pakistan. He said that he is close to both India and Pakistan, reports The Wire India.
“I am very close to India, and I’m very close to Pakistan, and they’ve had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir. Kashmir has been going on for a thousand years, probably longer than that. That was a bad one (terrorist attack),” Trump said, according to the audio file released by the White House.
In 2019, during his first stint as president, Trump had expressed interest to mediate between India and Pakistan. As The Wire had reported then, he had repeatedly expressed desire to “do the best I can to mediate or do something” over the “explosive situation” between India and Pakistan in Kashmir where “you have millions of people that want to be ruled by others”.
“Kashmir is a very complicated place. You have Hindus and you have the Muslims and I wouldn’t say they get along so great,” Trump had said then.
The April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam – by an offshoot of the Lashar-e-Tayyaba – has resulted in heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, with India vowing to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance and Pakistan saying this will be taken as an act of war. Both countries have cancelled existing visas to citizens of the other, barring a few exceptions.
