Washington/New Delhi, Mar 15 (UNI) US President Donald Trump said that he ordered the clean up of the capital city as he didn’t want Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other visiting world leaders to see tents, graffiti, broken barriers and pot holes.

In an address to the Department of Justice on Friday, the US President said that he wants a clean, crime-free capital city that Americans can be proud of.

“We’re cleaning up the city, we’re cleaning up this great capital. We’re not going to have crime, we’re not going to stand for crime. We’re going to take the graffiti down, we’re already taking the tents down...

“So far it’s been going very well, the Mayor is doing a good job,” he said of Mayor Muriel Bowser.

“We said there are tents galore right opposite the State Department, they have to come down, and they took them down right away. And so far so good, but we want to have a capital that can be the talk of the world.

“When Prime Minister Modi of India, when the president of France and all of these people, when the prime minister of the UK came to see me, in the last week and a half, and when they came, I had the route run. I didn’t want them to see the tents, I didn’t want them to see graffiti, I didn’t want them to see broken barriers and pot holes in the roads. I had it looking beautiful.

“We’re going to have a crime-free city. When people come over here, they are not going to be mugged or shot or raped. We are going to have a crime-free capital again,” he said.

PM Modi visited Washington on February 13 for a bilateral meeting with President Trump at the White House.

PM Modi was the fourth foreign leader hosted by President Trump within weeks of his January 20 inauguration.

Ahead of PM Modi, he had welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Jordan's King Abdullah II.

He also welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the White House.

UNI RN