Officials counter Rubio on India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement, say no decision on talks at neutral site

NEW DELHI: While US President Donald Trump, the first to announce the development, said both India and Pakistan had agreed to a "full and immediate ceasefire", secretary of state Marco Rubio went a step further and claimed the countries had consented to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. This was immediately denied by Indian govt sources who, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there's no decision to hold talks on any other issue at any other place. They also said the "stoppage of firing and military action" between India and Pakistan was worked out directly between the two countries. India has never accepted mediation in ties with Islamabad and has also refused to have any bilateral engagement with India for almost a decade because of Pakistan's support to cross-border terrorism.

Officials here said India had already achieved its goal of taking out high-value terrorist infrastructure and had also retaliated with full force against Pakistan's escalation, as evident from the heavy damages inflicted on Pakistan's military facilities. Govt sources also said India will not roll back the measures it announced against Pakistan on April 23, a day after the Pahalgam attack, including its decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance.

According to Rubio, he and vice-president JD Vance engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including PMs Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, external affairs minister S Jaishankar, Pakistan army chief Asim Munir, and national security advisers Ajit Doval and Asim Malik. "We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace," he said.

Earlier in the day, in the first major US action to avert a full-blown war between India and Pakistan, Rubio had called Munir, the architect of a major escalation by Pakistan Friday night, and asked him to work for de-escalation. For the first time, Rubio also offered US support for direct talks between the two sides to end the spiralling conflict, while asking them to find ways to step back.

Rubio followed it up with phone calls to foreign minister Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar, repeating the same offer from the US of facilitating "productive discussions" to prevent conflicts. Jaishankar told Rubio, as he later said in a post on X, India's approach has been measured and responsible and remains so. Rubio stressed in his talks with Jaishankar that both sides need to identify methods to de-escalate and re-establish direct communication to avoid miscalculation.

"He further proposed US support in facilitating productive discussions to avert future disputes," said the US readout. This was the first such offer of mediation by the US to defuse tensions, and followed comments by Vance that the US will not get involved in a war that is fundamentally none of its business.

Rubio's intervention suggests that the US' patience is wearing thin after Friday night's escalation that resulted from the Pakistan army aggression and the possibility of an all-out war between India and Pakistan, the kind of which has not been seen since both became nuclear-weapon states in 1998. His calls followed remarks by the White House that Trump has good relations with both countries and wants to see de-escalation as quickly as possible.