US President Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated his claim of having stopped the war between India and Pakistan, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi is said to have told him over the phone that New Delhi “will never accept mediation”.

The claim, the fourteenth time Trump had said so, came ahead of his lunch meeting with Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir at the White House.

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This was the first conversation between Modi and Trump after India and Pakistan decided to hold fire in what the US, in general, and the President, in particular, calls a Washington-brokered “ceasefire”.

“I stopped the war between Pakistan and India. This man was extremely influential in stopping it from the Pakistan side, Modi from the India side and others. They were going at it and they’re both nuclear countries. I got it stopped…. I stopped a war between two major nations, major nuclear nations,” Trump told reporters when asked what he hoped to gain diplomatically from his meeting with Munir.

Neither the White House nor the US state department had put out a readout on the telephone conversation till late in the evening.

The conversation with Modi was announced by foreign secretary Vikram Misri in a detailed statement just as India woke up to the news of Trump hosting Munir despite New Delhi’s diplomatic outreach to isolate Pakistan. The Pakistan Army, more than the civilian leadership of the country, is complicit in using terror as state policy against India, and Munir had resurrected the “Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan” narrative days before the Pahalgam attack.

Detailing the conversation and the circumstances that led to it, Misri said Trump requested the telecon after he was unable to meet Modi on the sidelines of the G7 in Alberta, Canada, because he had to head back to the US early.

While sources had on Tuesday morning indicated that Modi was likely to have bilateral meetings with four heads of state/government at the G7 Outreach Summit, Trump was not on that list. But it is not out of the ordinary for meetings to materialise at the eleventh hour at such summits.

According to Misri, Trump also enquired if Modi could stop over in the US on his way back from Canada but the Prime Minister expressed his inability to do so because of prior commitments.

From Alberta, Modi flew to Zagreb in Croatia — his last stop in the three-nation tour.

About the conversation, Misri said Modi spoke in detail about Operation Sindoor. “Prime Minister Modi clearly conveyed to President Trump that at no point during this entire sequence of events was there any discussion, at any level, on an India-US trade deal, or any proposal for mediation by the US between India and Pakistan.

“The discussion to cease military action took place directly between India and Pakistan through the existing channels of communication between the two armed forces, and it was initiated at Pakistan’s request. Prime Minister Modi firmly stated that India does not and will never accept mediation. There is complete political consensus in India on this matter.”

Since May 10 — the day India and Pakistan stopped firing at each other — Trump has claimed at least 14 times that he had brokered the peace. In some instances, he claimed that he had used trade with the US as a tool to get the two countries to hold fire.

The external affairs ministry has repeatedly maintained that there was no mediation but sidestepped questions on whether India had registered a protest with the US for Trump’s claims, particularly since it had becomean embarrassment for the Prime Minister. Modi himself has never spoken on the subject in public.

Ahead of Trump’s closed-door lunch with Munir, the Pakistani daily Dawn said: “The lunch is being seen in Islamabad as a major diplomatic win, particularly because earlier this month, an Indian delegation met US Vice-President J.D. Vance and Indian media depicted it as a diplomatic success, contrasting it with the apparent inability of the Pakistani delegation to secure a similar meeting. Gen Munir’s invitation to the White House is now being projected byofficials in Islamabad as adiplomatic counterpoint to those narratives.”

The US has been appreciative of Pakistan’s role in counter-terrorism, especially in dealing with ISIS-Khorasan. Last week, General Michael Kurilla, who commands the US Central Command (CENTCOM), in his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, described Pakistan as a “phenomenal partner in the counter-terrorism world” for going after ISIS-Khorasan.

Kurilla also recalled how he was the first to be informed by Munir about the capture of Mohammad Sharifullah, better known as Jafar, and offered to extradite him tothe US.

Munir also wanted the general to inform the secretary of defence and the President about the arrest of Jafar, wanted in the Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport in which 182 people, including 13 US military personnel, were killed in August 2021.

Trump is also likely toexplore the possibility of exploiting Pakistan’s uneasy relationship with Iran amid its conflict with Israel.

Last year, Iran carriedout missile strikes in Pakistan’s Balochistan provinceto target a terror group. Pakistan retaliated by launchinga similar attack in the adjoining Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran on thesame pretext.