India asks Hegseth to advise US’s ‘true friend’ Pakistan to stop backing terror

New Delhi: India asked the US to impress upon its “true friend” Pakistan to “credibly and irrevocably” stop all cross-border terrorism against its eastern neighbour. The US war secretary, Pete Hegseth, had described Washington-Islamabad ties as an emerging “true friendship”, at the recently concluded Shangri-La Dialogue 2026 in Singapore.

In sharp response to Hegseth’s remarks on the US-Pakistan ties, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reminded Washington that Islamabad was the epicentre of global terrorism.

“We hope our friends and partners would impress upon the country (Pakistan) to credibly and irrevocably abjure cross-border terrorism,” the MEA spokesman, Randhir Jaiswal, said.

Randhir Jaiswal was responding to reporters’ questions at the weekly media briefing on Hegseth praising the Pakistani army chief, Asim Munir, and the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, at the Singapore meeting.

Hegseth had called the US-Pakistan ties the past year “an unexpected development and a true friendship,” praising both Munir and Sharif for their mediation in the West Asian war with Iran.

The Trump administration’s love for Pakistan grew after Islamabad credited the US president for stopping the war with India in May 2025 and recommended him for the Nobel peace prize, which he never got.

India, on the other hand, did not agree with Trump’s claim of using the tariff stick to force it to agree to a ceasefire with Pakistan. India has consistently maintained that the Pakistani military picked up the army hotline and sought a halt to New Delhi’s military offensive after the 4-day “Operation Sindoor” hammering unleashed by the Indian military that crippled Islamabad’s capability to respond.

Islamabad also willingly played mediator on Trump’s bidding after the US military offensive on Iran in March did not end in a victory, and the conflict has since been dragging on.

All the Pakistani subservience only enamoured Trump, who has since been laying a red carpet for Munir at the White House, and Sharif has been hoping for a financial bailout to lift Islamabad from its economic morass. India’s concerns with Pakistan getting a helping hand to tide over its economic problems and a lifeline to escape its image as a global terror sponsor are not just about decades of cross-border terrorism on its soil, including the April 2025 Pahalgam attack that triggered Operation Sindoor.

The Indian objections are directly linked to Rawalpindi providing a haven to Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and leader of al-Qaida.

Notably, while praising Pakistan, Hegseth had also described India as a “critical anchor” of stability in the Indo-Pacific and reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to defence cooperation and weapons co-production with New Delhi.