Pakistan representatives to visit US next week, trade deal with India 'very close': Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump said on Friday Pakistan representatives are coming to the US next week for talks related trade and tariff. He also said, “We're very close to making a deal with India,” but added that "I wouldn't have any interest in making a deal with either if they were going to be at war with each other..."

Trump, yet, again, stressed his claim about the US mediating a “ceasefire” between India and Pakistan through trade and not bullets.

He said, “I think the deal I'm most proud of is the fact that we're dealing with India, we're dealing with Pakistan, and we were able to stop potentially a nuclear war through trade as opposed through bullets.”

“You know, normally they do it through bullets. We do it through trade. So I'm very proud of that. Nobody talks about it. But we had a very nasty potential war going on between Pakistan and India. And now, if you look, they're doing fine,” Trump said.

Trump has been taking the credit for brokering the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan, asserting that he used trade as a negotiation tactic.

However, India has maintained that the bilateral understanding reached between India and Pakistan on May 10 was through direct talks and no third party was involved.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in an interview earlier this May that it's natural that when two countries are engaged in a conflict, other countries in the world "call up and try to sort of indicate their concern".

"But the cessation of firing and military action was something which was negotiated directly between India and Pakistan," Jaishankar reiterated in an interview with Dutch public broadcasters NOS.

The cross-firing between India and Pakistan had started after India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, following the Pahalgam terror attack, conducting precision strikes on terror infrastructure across the border in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK).