US President Donald Trump "no longer has plans" to travel to India later this year for the Quad Summit, The New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday. The article spoke of how the rapport between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has "unravelled" in the past few months.
In a report titled “The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unravelled”, the NYT, citing people familiar with Trump’s schedule, said, “After telling Mr Modi that he would travel to India later this year for the Quad Summit, Mr Trump no longer has plans to visit in the fall.”
Neither the US nor India has made an official announcement on this.
India is hosting the leaders of Australia, Japan, and the US for the Quad Summit in New Delhi during November. Previously, the Trump administration hosted the Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting in January after Trump started his second term as US President.
The NYT report also attributed the cooling of relations to trade tensions between Delhi and Washington. Relations had allegedly soured after Trump constantly took credit for "solving" the four-day clash between India and Pakistan in May, a charge which has been rejected by New Delhi.
“President Trump’s repeated claims about having ‘solved’ the India-Pakistan war infuriated Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And that was only the beginning,” the NYT said, adding that Modi was “losing patience” with Trump.
The two leaders talked for 35 minutes on June 17, with Trump returning to Washington from the G7 Summit in Canada, where Modi was also present. While a meeting was scheduled on the margins of the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Trump departed early, and Modi rang him instead.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri later explained that Modi informed Trump that "at no point" subsequent to Operation Sindoor was there any mention of a trade agreement or US intervention between India and Pakistan. The ceasefire was decided by the two countries directly through military channels and at Pakistan's request, Misri added.
As reported by the NYT, on the June 17 call, Trump repeated his claim of credit for halting the military escalation and also noted that Pakistan would be nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. "The not-so-subtle implication, according to people who were briefed on the call, was that Mr Modi should do the same," the report stated.
The Indian leader bristled. He informed Mr Trump that US involvement had absolutely nothing to do with the ceasefire. It was resolved directly between India and Pakistan," the NYT further added.
The report suggested that Modi’s refusal to endorse Trump’s role or support his Nobel ambitions was a key factor in the worsening of relations. Despite publicly claiming more than 40 times since May 10 that he had stopped the conflict, Trump did not acknowledge the June 17 call.
The NYT added that Trump's imposition of extra 25 per cent tariffs on India's imports of Russian oil “appeared to be punishment for not falling in line, rather than a cohesive effort to reduce the trade deficit or curb funding for Russia’s war.”
Richard Rossow, Chair on India at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, was quoted as saying: “If this was a real policy change to squeeze Russia, Trump could have supported legislation imposing secondary sanctions on all countries buying Russian hydrocarbons. The fact that India was uniquely targeted shows this is about more than just Russia.”
The NYT further reported that Trump, "frustrated with tariff talks," attempted to reach Modi on several occasions, but the latter "did not respond to those overtures.
Read also| Zelenskyy dials PM Modi ahead of his meeting with President Putin
Read also| PM Modi Returns to China After 7 Years; Focus on Sunday Talks with President Xi
