'I was very honoured': Trump says Asim Munir praised him for stopping India-Pakistan war

US President Donald Trump has once again repeated his claim that he intervened to stop a war between India and Pakistan earlier, asserting that his actions prevented a major conflict from escalating. He also said that Pakistan's Field Marshal Asim Munir told him that he stopped the war and saved millions of people.  

"India and Pakistan were going at it, and I called them both. And in this case, I use trade. I'm not going to trade with you. You start two nuclear nations. Big nuclear. No, no, no. You cannot do that," Trump said while addressing the Department of War on Tuesday. "You go into this freaking war that I'm hearing about. Actually, they just shot down seven planes. It was starting. There's a lot of bad blood. And I said, 'You do this, there's not going to be any trade,'" 

Trump continued. "And I stopped the war. It was going, it was raging for four days, but that was just the beginning. And we stopped it."

"The prime minister of Pakistan was here along with the field marshal (Asim Munir) who's a very important guy in Pakistan. And he was here three days ago," Trump said. "And I didn’t even realise it as beautifully as he said it, but he said that to a group of people that were with us...He said, ‘This man saved millions of lives because he saved the war from going on.'"

"That war was going to get very bad. President Trump saved millions and millions of lives. That was a bad war. And I was very honored. I love the way he (Munir) said it. Susie Wiles (White House Chief of Staff) was there. She said that was the most beautiful thing. But we saved a lot of them." 

The US President also touted his success in mediating conflicts elsewhere, including his claim of averting a long-standing conflict in Africa between Rwanda and the Congo. "We saved the Congo with Rwanda. They've been fighting for 31 years. 10 million people dead. I got that one done and very proud of it," he said.

Despite these claims, Trump expressed frustration over the likelihood of not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, suggesting it would instead go to someone who had not played a direct role in resolving such conflicts. "Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not," he said. "They'll give it to some guy that didn't do a damn thing. They'll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took to solve the wars."

Trump emphasised that his main goal was not personal recognition, but to ensure the well-being of the country. "I don’t want it. I want the country to get it," he said.

In his address to world leaders from the UN podium last week, Trump had repeated his claim that he stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan in May this year. India has, however, been consistently maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached following direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations of the two militaries.