India has “categorically” said that any dialogue with Pakistan has to be held at a bilateral level, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told Al Jazeera in an interview aired on Monday.

Asked whether Islamabad wanted the involvement of a third-party mediator, Dar said: “Well, we don’t mind, but India has been categorically saying that it is bilateral, so we don’t mind bilateral.”

Talking about the ceasefire negotiations with India in May following Operation Sindoor, the Pakistani foreign minister said: “When the ceasefire offer came through Secretary Rubio [US Secretary of State Marco Rubio] to me on 10th of May, around 8.17 am, I was told that there would very soon be a dialogue between you [Pakistan] and India at an independent place.”

He added that when he met Rubio on July 25 for a bilateral meeting in Washington, the US secretary of state asked him about the proposed dialogue between India and Pakistan.

“He said India says it is a bilateral issue,” Dar said. “So we are not begging for anything…any country…So unless India wishes to have dialogue, we don’t wish to force them.”

The statement contradicts United States President Donald Trump’s claim of having mediated dialogue between India and Pakistan earlier this year.

Tensions between India and Pakistan had escalated after the Indian military on May 7 carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.

The Pakistan Army had retaliated by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Several civilians were killed in the firing.

On May 10, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced that the Pakistani director general of military operations had called his Indian counterpart to propose an end to the hostilities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated this position in his address to the nation on May 12.

However, the announcement by the Indian foreign secretary had come minutes after US President Donald Trump claimed on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to the ceasefire. Trump had claimed that the ceasefire talks were mediated by Washington.

Rubio had also claimed on social media that New Delhi and Islamabad had agreed to “start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site”.

New Delhi has publicly rejected this version of events.

On June 17, Modi told Trump during a phone call that New Delhi had agreed to the ceasefire only on Islamabad’s request, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said.

“Prime Minister Modi made it clear to President Trump that during this entire episode, at no time, at any level, were issues such as India-US trade deal or mediation by the US between India and Pakistan discussed,” Misri had said at the time.

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