Jaishankar Slams Pak for Blocking Terror Reference

India refused to sign on for a joint statement at a meeting of defence ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) because one country refused to include a reference to terrorism in the document, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Friday in a tacit swipe at Pakistan.

- Rezaul H Laskar

NEW DELHI:

The objective of the SCO is to fight terrorism, and defence minister Rajnath Singh refused to accept the joint statement because it did not contain a reference to terror, Jaishankar told reporters on the margins of an event organised by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) to mark the 50th anniversary of the Emergency.

"The objective of the SCO was to fight terrorism. This organisation exists to fight terrorism," Jaishankar said. When there was a discussion on the outcome document of the SCO defence ministers meeting at Qingdao in China, Jaishankar said that "one country, you can guess which one, said...we do not want a reference to that [terrorism]".

Though Jaishankar did not name any country, it was obvious he was referring to Pakistan. After India did not endorse the joint statement on Thursday, officials said Singh refused to sign on for the document as it was silent on the Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 in which 26 people were killed, but mentioned the situation in Pakistan's Balochistan province and the hijacking of the Jaffer Express train by Baloch militants in March.