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 do not mind, but India has been categorically saying that it is bilateral, so we do not 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, Dar asked the US secretary of state about the proposed dialogue between India and Pakistan.

“He [Rubio] 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 do not wish to force them.”

On Wednesday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rejected United States President Donald Trump’s claims of having intervened to stop the India-Pakistan conflict, saying that the action against terrorists was not suspended due to any third-party mediation, The Hindu reported.

“Some claim to have stopped the Indo-Pak conflict,” Singh said. “Nobody did it. Pakistan’s Deputy PM made it clear that India rejected any third-party role in it.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear that it is a bilateral matter and that no third party can interfere, he added.

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.

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”.

The US president has repeatedly claimed credit for brokering the ceasefire between the two countries.

New Delhi has rejected the claims and maintained that the ceasefire was not the result of mediation.