PM Modi avoided four Donald Trump calls, says German media, as US-India ties sour

TOI correspondent from Washington: Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused to take four calls from US President Donald Trump in recent weeks amid a raging trade dispute, a German newspaper has reported, as ties between Washington and New Delhi have soured rapidly, testing what both sides repeatedly said was the most consequential relationship of the 21st century.

The Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung did not cite the source of its claim, but opined that the trade clash between Trump and Modi illustrated that India will not bow to American pressure and New Delhi wants to manage its relations with both Washington and Beijing in its own way. A Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia carried a similar report about Modi avoiding the US President's calls, "heightening Trump's frustration."

Officials in Washington declined to confirm or deny if the calls were made, but a key Indian diplomat said in a background conversation earlier this month that it is not PM Modi's style to negotiate details over the phone. Separately, another source said it is possible Modi ducked the call to be avoid the outcome of the conversation being misrepresented, something New Delhi suggests the US President has done on the India-Pakistan clash.

Trump has claimed dozens of times over the past four months that he stopped a possible nuclear war between India and Pakistan by using trade, often throwing out random numbers about how close they were to it, how many jets were lost, and how many wars he prevented. In the latest riff on the subject, which many American analysts now characterize as a delusional attempt to cadge a Nobel Peace Prize, he said India and Pakistan were two weeks away from a nuclear war.

The PM also declined Trump's impromptu invitation to visit Washington late June after the G-20 meeting in Canada -- when they did not meet in person as Trump left early. The US President ostensibly wanted Modi in the White House at the same time he had invited Pakistan's de facto military ruler Asim Munir for bragging rights that he had forged peace between them. India has expressed resentment about the false equivalence between a perpetrator of terrorism and a victim of terrorism, a difference that appears lost on a White House in thrall of business opportunities.

Seasoned US analysts, even former officials who are not particularly well inclined towards New Delhi, suggest that Trump's personal pique, more than policy issues, is driving ties off the cliff, and are warning that his hostility towards India will drive it closer to the China and Russia.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has fallen foul of the US President, said India too feels "deeply aggrieved" by Trump because it is the only victim of his threat to impose tariffs and sanctions, even as Russia and China remain largely untouched. "The longer India hangs out to dry, the worse the New Delhi-Washington relationship gets," Bolton wrote, hours after he was subjected to an FBI raid in what was said to be a national security investigation.