US President Donald Trump, on Tuesday (July 22), yet again claimed credit for brokering a peace deal between India and Pakistan, stating that his mediation averted a potential “nuclear war” between the two countries.

He also alleged that five planes were shot down in the conflict.

“We stopped wars between India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda,” he said at a reception in the White House with the Congress members.

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“They shot down five planes and it was back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I called them and said, ‘Listen, no more trade. If you do this, you’re not going to be good…They’re both powerful nuclear nations and that would have happened, and who knows where that would have ended up. And I stopped it’,” he added.

He further claimed that the United States obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities and stopped the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia.

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“And a couple of others that we didn’t stop a war, but we stopped what probably could have ended up in a war. We do that on the House as compliments of America. Okay, do you think (former US President Joe) Biden would do that? I don’t think so. Do you think he ever heard of any of those countries? I don’t think so,” the US president said.

‘Five jets were shot down,’ says Trump

Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that the United States mediated and brokered a truce between India and Pakistan, for the first time on Friday said that “five jets were shot down” during the conflict. However, he did not specify whether the jets were lost by either of the two countries or whether he was referring to combined losses.

Speaking at the White House during a dinner he hosted for Republican senators on Friday, Trump said, “You had India, Pakistan, that was going… in fact, planes were being shot out of the air…four or five. But I think five jets were shot down actually…that was getting worse and worse, wasn’t it? That was looking like it was going to go…these are two serious nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other.”

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“But India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger. And we got it solved through trade. We said ‘You guys want to make a trade deal. We’re not making a trade deal if you’re going to be throwing around weapons and maybe nuclear weapons. Both very powerful nuclear states,” Trump said.

He said his administration achieved more in six months than almost any other could accomplish in eight years.

“Something I am very proud of, we stopped a lot of wars, a lot of wars. And these were serious wars,” Trump said.

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New Delhi has consistently maintained that the two sides halted their military actions following direct talks between their militaries without any mediation by the US.

Since May 10, Trump has repeated his claim at least 20 times on various occasions that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan and that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America will do a “lot of trade” with them if they stopped the conflict.

(With inputs from agencies)