At a State Department press briefing on Thursday, Spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked about the conflict between India and Pakistan.
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00:00All right. Taking your questions here. Yes, please.
00:04Thanks, Tammy. On India and Pakistan, I saw the readouts of the Secretary's calls,
00:08but can you give us any more details on any requests or commitments that the Secretary made of either the Pakistanis or the Indians moving forward?
00:17And there was also a note expressing condolences about civilians killed in his conversation with the Pakistanis.
00:22Should we take this to mean that the U.S. does not have fidelity on India's claims that these were terrorist infrastructures that were struck?
00:30Well, I think that having been listening to those calls, some of them,
00:35and being in the process as all of us were in some fashion or another when this conflict began,
00:42it was the real focus of the Secretary of State who has been the center point leading these conversations and this outreach.
00:52And he's made very clear, focusing on two things, that this should not escalate.
01:00This has been a key framework. Clearly, this has been an issue for decades.
01:05And it's with what we saw over the last few weeks after the terrorist attack.
01:10It was not surprising, but very, very disappointing.
01:14But it was about certainly that it should not escalate.
01:18And communication was fundamentally key, that there should be talks, that there should not be silence,
01:25and that America obviously was at the center of this in speaking with a variety of leaders of both countries over the last two days.
01:33So has he offered to play a mediation role?
01:36Well, as you know, I mean, this is in every situation, in this particular case, of course, a very delicate and dangerous situation.
01:44But in any case where there's diplomatic conversations between leaders of countries or really any level where there's negotiations happening,
01:53we are not going to be speaking about the details.
01:56That is certainly our policy.
01:59We think it's important to not put details in the midst of the media, the worldwide media,
02:06when the work is being done privately between leaders.
02:09And we need to really try to keep it that way.
02:11Sorry.
02:11And on the terrorist infrastructure, is there anything you can say?
02:14Does the U.S. have – have they been provided with any intelligence to back up India's claims here?
02:18Well, what I can say here, a few more things, certainly.
02:22We continue to urge India and Pakistan to work towards a responsible solution in this.
02:29And we've been saying that certainly from the beginning.
02:32We also want to say that what matters in this particular instance right now where we're at is that the phone calls happened,
02:40that we are remaining engaged with both governments at, again, multiple levels.
02:44We, though, will not engage in the nature of discussing what the conversations have been or what we've conveyed.
02:55Certainly there's a lot already on the record when it comes to our reaction to what's been happening here.
03:00So there's some discussion that Pakistan wants an independent investigation as to what has happened regarding the terrorist attack.
03:10And, of course, what we say to that is we want the perpetrators to be held accountable
03:14and are supportive of any efforts to that end.