NEW DELHI — India has once again firmly turned down any attempts by a third party to mediate in its relations with Pakistan. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar recently repeated this stance. Dar told Al Jazeera that he had talked to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that US efforts to help negotiations had failed as recently as July.
The diplomatic talks happened as “Operation Sindoor” was going on, which was India’s response to the April 22 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 tourists.
Mr. Dar talked on the US’s first attempts at mediation, saying, “When Secretary Rubio gave me the ceasefire offer on May 11 at 8:17 a.m., I was told that ‘Very soon, there will be dialogue between you and India at an independent place.'” But the idea of US-brokered discussions swiftly fell apart. The Pakistan minister stated, “When we met on July 25 for a bilateral meeting between myself and Secretary Rubio in Washington, he said, ‘India says it is bilateral.'” This shows that India’s attitude has not changed.
This story goes against what US President Donald Trump has said several times: that Washington was able to bring peace between India and Pakistan in May. India has always refuted these assertions, saying that any talks must be held between the two countries without outside interference.
Mr. Dar made Pakistan’s position clear by saying that his country “wouldn’t mind third party mediation,” but India’s demand on bilateral discussions means that the next steps must be taken. He stressed that for any conversation to be useful, it had to cover “everything—terrorism, trade, the economy, and Jammu and Kashmir.” He further said that during Operation Sindoor, Pakistan had “knocked on the doors of global capitals” to ask for help from other countries.
Dar talked about the US’s role at the time of heightened tension. “We need to recognize how helpful the US was during the India-Pakistan war. We never urged anyone to stop fighting. “I talked to world capitals almost 60 times before the air battle on May 7 and the ground battle on May 10,” he claimed. He ended by saying that people all across the world want peace: “I know that the vast majority, whether they are Muslim or not, want peace, diplomacy, and dialogue.”