Will Trump visit Pakistan? White House clarifies after varied reports

Reports of US President Donald Trump's visit to Pakistan in September surfaced on Thursday (July 17). Two leading channels were running it until the foreign office issued a statement saying it had no knowledge of the said visit. Shortly, the channels apologised to its viewers.

"A trip to Pakistan has not been scheduled at this time", the White House confirmed to news agency ANI.

The report suggested that Trump would visit Islamabad and then continue his tour by visiting India. The last time Trump visited India was in February 2020, and the last US president to visit Pakistan was George W. Bush in 2006. The channels ran the news at a time when Trump had been reiterating that he brokered peace between the two nuclear-armed nations. Mentioning it on multiple occasions, Trump recently highlighted the India-Pakistan conflict during a meeting with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, at the White House.

Trump said, "We have been very successful in settling wars. You have India, Pakistan...India and Pakistan would have been a nuclear war within another week, the way that was going. That was going very badly. We did that through trade. I said, we're not going to talk to you about trade unless you get this thing settled. And they did, they are both great leaders."

Talking about Trump's planned visit, US White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said he will be visiting Scotland from July 25 to July 29. She mentioned that the president would be visiting both Turnberry and Aberdine. A meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also scheduled.