‘Good Friend Of Mine’: Trump Praises PM Modi At Egypt Summit, With Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif Standing Behind
US President Donald Trump on Monday lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India at the Gaza Peace Summit in Egypt, calling Modi a “very good friend” and expressing optimism that India and Pakistan would “live very nicely together”—all while Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stood just behind him.Speaking at the high-profile summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump singled out the Indian leader for praise. “India is a great country with a very good friend of mine at the top, and he’s just done a fantastic job,” he said.
Turning to the Pakistani Prime Minister, Trump then asked directly, “I think that Pakistan and India are gonna live very nicely together, right?” before answering his own question with, “They are, they are.”The friendly exchange came just moments after Sharif had hailed Trump’s global peace efforts and publicly re-nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Sharif credited Trump’s leadership with having “saved millions of lives” in both South Asia and the Middle East. Referring to the military escalation between India and Pakistan in May, he said, “Had it not been for this gentleman, who knows… the war could have escalated to a level where none of us would have lived to tell what happened.”Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for defusing tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours during that four-day conflict, dubbed ‘Operation Sindoor’.
However, India has consistently maintained that the ceasefire was reached through direct bilateral negotiations and that no external force was involved.The Gaza Peace Summit was attended by over 20 world leaders, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the leaders of the UK, France, and Italy, to finalize a framework for peace in the region. India was represented at the summit by Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh.
