Secretary of State Marco Rubio says top administration officials are speaking with both sides and urging de-escalation.
President Donald Trump on May 6 responded to rising tensions between India and Pakistan after India launched airstrikes, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said officials are speaking with both sides.
Pakistan is responding militarily to India’s airstrikes, which followed a terrorist attack that killed 26 people on April 22 in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir, a Himalayan region bordering Pakistan, India, and China.
All three nations control parts of it, and India and Pakistan both claim full sovereignty over it.
During an exchange with reporters in the White House on Tuesday evening, Trump said that the escalating incident between the two nuclear-armed states is “a shame,” adding, “We just heard about it.”
“I guess people knew something was going to happen based on a little bit of the past. They’ve been fighting for a long time.” Trump said. “I just hope it ends very quickly.”
Rubio wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday that he was monitoring the situation closely, adding that Washington would continue to engage with both sides to forge a resolution.
The Trump administration’s top national security advisers have spoken to top officials of both India and Pakistan following the military strikes, he said.
“I am monitoring the situation between India and Pakistan closely. I echo [the president’s] comments earlier today that this hopefully ends quickly and will continue to engage both Indian and Pakistani leadership towards a peaceful resolution,” Rubio wrote, adding that he wants both states to “keep lines of communication open and avoid escalation.”
In a statement posted online, India’s government said it struck infrastructure used by Pakistani groups that were linked to last month’s terrorist attack. The region has been the subject of decades-long tensions between the two nations.
“Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution,” the Indian government said in its statement on Tuesday.
