Amid escalating tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, US President Donald Trump on Saturday said it would be an "easy" conflict for him to resolve if necessary, as he reiterated his claim of having solved "eight wars."
"Although I do understand that Pakistan attacked, or there is an attack going on with Afghanistan. That's an easy one for me to solve if I have to solve it. In the meantime, I have to run the USA, but I love solving wars," Trump told reporters during a bilateral lunch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House.
The US President also lamented not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even after his self-proclaimed efforts to stop multiple wars, including the India-Pakistan conflict, a claim that New Delhi has rejected.
India has consistently maintained that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.
However, Trump claimed that the ongoing Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict would be the ninth such "war" he would be preventing if he decides to do so.
"I solved eight wars. Go to Rwanda and the Congo, and talk about India and Pakistan. Look at all of the wars that we solved, and every time I solved, when they said, 'If you solve the next one, you're going to get the Nobel Prize.' I didn't get a Nobel Prize. Somebody got it who is a very nice woman. I don't know who she is, but she was very generous. I don't care about all that stuff. I just care about saving lives. But this (Pak-Afghan conflict) will be number nine," Trump said.
Trump stressed that he is the only US president who has stopped wars while adding that his predecessors were eager to start conflicts.
"So, to the best of my knowledge, we've never had a president who solved one war. Not one war. Bush started a war... a lot of them start wars but don't solve them. Especially when it had nothing to do with us (US). I solved all these wars, when it had nothing to do with us. But I saved tens of millions of lives," Trump claimed.
The US President's statements came as Afghan and Pakistani officials travelled to the Qatari capital, Doha, hoping to defuse the deadliest crisis between them in several years, after more than a week of fighting killed dozens of people and injured hundreds on both sides.
At least 10 civilians were killed and a dozen more were injured late Friday in a Pakistani strike on a border province in western Afghanistan, breaking a ceasefire that had brought two days of calm to the border. The ceasefire that began on Wednesday ended on Friday evening with no formal announcement of an extension, though diplomatic efforts to halt the hostilities were underway.
