{"id":26253,"date":"2020-05-29T14:32:45","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T09:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/govt-officials-deny-trumps-claim-of-talk-with-modi-on-lac-situation\/"},"modified":"2020-05-29T14:32:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T09:02:45","slug":"govt-officials-deny-trumps-claim-of-talk-with-modi-on-lac-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=26253","title":{"rendered":"Govt officials deny Trump\u2019s claim of talk with Modi on LAC situation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They say they were taken by surprise by the U.S. President\u2019s remarks<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government on Friday forcefully rejected U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s claim that he had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the situation on the Line of Actual Control with China, or that the two leaders spoke at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere has been no recent contact between PM Modi and President Trump. The last conversation between them was on 4 April 2020 on the subject of Hydroxychloroquine,\u201d said government sources, who did not wish to be identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government officials told The Hindu they were taken by surprise by the U.S. President\u2019s comments, particularly his reference to PM Modi\u2019s \u201cmood\u201d when Mr. Trump claimed to have spoken to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can tell you, I did speak to Prime Minister Modi. He’s not \u2013 he’s not in a good mood about what’s going on with China,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday (Friday morning India time).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sources also dismissed Mr. Trump\u2019s repeated offer of mediation, saying that India and China were in touch directly. Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he was willing to \u201cmediate or arbitrate\u201d over what he called the \u201craging border dispute\u201d between India and China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to questions about Mr. Trump\u2019s tweet, MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava had said that India and China were \u201cengaged with the Chinese side to peacefully resolve the issue\u201d, referring to the month-long standoff between the two armies along the LAC at points in Ladakh and Sikkim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMEA had also made it clear that we are directly in touch with the Chinese through established mechanisms and diplomatic contacts,\u201d the government sources added on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked by reporters, Mr. Trump said that he would indeed be willing to broker talks between India and China if \u201cit would help\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would do that. You know, I would do that. If they \u2013 if they thought it would help if I were the mediator or the arbiter, I would do that. So, we\u2019ll see,\u201d Mr. Trump told a correspondent who asked him about his tweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a series of responses to the correspondent of the PTI news agency, Mr. Trump said that he had returned from India just prior to the Coronavirus outbreak and that he \u201cjust beat COVID\u201d. When asked about his \u201crockstar popularity\u201d in India, Mr. Trump added, \u201cI got back \u2013 I know. And they like me in India. I think they like me in India certainly more than the media likes me in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not the first time Mr. Trump has spoken publicly about a conversation between him and Mr. Modi, including the most recent conversation on India\u2019s ban on HCQ exports, a ban which was reversed after the two leaders spoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While government officials have in the past questioned Mr. Trump\u2019s version of the conversations, this is the first time that they have said that there was no conversation at all, as Mr. Trump claimed, creating a diplomatic precedent of sorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With inputs from <\/em>The Hindu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say they were taken by surprise by the U.S. President\u2019s remarks The government on Friday forcefully rejected U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s claim that he had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the situation on the Line of Actual Control with China, or that the two leaders spoke at all. \u201cThere has been no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}