Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar said Monday that the grouping’s “primary mandate” is to “combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism” ahead of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (CFM) in Tianjin.
“We will meet tomorrow under the SCO framework, which has as its main objective the fight against extremism, separatism, and terrorism. In his opening remarks during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday, the EAM stated that “zero tolerance for terrorism is a shared concern and India hopes that it will be strongly upheld.”
The SCO Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Qingdao last month was unable to approve a Joint Statement because it failed to take India’s terrorism concerns into account.
In addition to calling on the member nations to work together to eradicate the threat for the sake of global safety and security, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who was present at the meeting, outlined the general parameters of India’s transitional change in its anti-terrorism policy.
“I am aware that a Joint Statement was not possible for them to accept. I am also aware that the paper could not be finalized since member nations were unable to agree on several points. During a routine media briefing on June 26 in New Delhi, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated, “On our side, India wanted concerns on terrorism reflected in the document, which was unacceptable to one particular country, and therefore the statement was not adopted.”
The brutal Pahalgam terror attack and India’s Operation Sindoor to destroy terror infrastructure across the border were highlighted on June 24. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval also emphasized the urgent need to avoid using double standards in the fight against terrorism and to take strong action against terrorists and organizations that have been banned by the UN.
India is extremely concerned about the ongoing threat from terror groups designated by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), two of the most dangerous and state-supported terror groups operating out of Pakistan, in addition to Al Qaeda, ISIS, and its affiliates, NSA Doval said while speaking at the 20th meeting of the Security Council Secretaries of the SCO Member States in Beijing.
He emphasized in his intervention the need to avoid using double standards in the fight against terrorism, to take firm action against terrorists and organizations that have been banned by the UN, such as LeT, JeM, and their proxies, and to destroy their terror eco-systems.
India had urged SCO countries to hold culprits, planners, funders, and supporters of cross-border terrorism accountable and to assist in bringing them to justice, reiterating that all acts of terror, including cross-border terrorism, are crimes against humanity.
NSA Doval also spoke with Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Political Bureau, while he was there.
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