No mention of terror at SCO unacceptable: EAM

India refused to sign a joint statement at a meeting of defence ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) because one country would not 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 didn't 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]".