BEIJING: Defence ministers attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting on Thursday failed to reach a consensus on a joint statement due to India’s refusal, while Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif reaffirmed the country’s commitment to combating terrorism and promoting regional peace and security within the SCO framework.
The SCO is a 10-nation Eurasian security and political grouping whose members include China, Russia, Pakistan, India, and Iran. Their defence ministers’ meeting was held as a precursor to the annual summit of its leaders set for the autumn.
Addressing the session, Asif condemned Israel’s recent 12-day war against Iran and stressed the importance of collective efforts to address evolving global and regional security challenges, state broadcaster PTV News reported.
“Terrorism is a common threat. Pakistan calls on all states to desist from politicising the joint effort of the International Community to fight the means of terrorism to deflect attention from their internal failures,” the defence minister stated.
Noting that Pakistan denounced terrorism in all of its forms, Asif, according to PTV, said that the country condemned the April terrorist attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which left 26 people dead.
“We call upon all states to hold these states and their state actions to account who planned, financed and sponsored the terrorist attack as Jaffar Express in Balochistan,” Asif added, not naming the country that aided the attack.
“We have in our custody … a serving Naval Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav [who] confessed to financing, planning and perpetrating multiple terrorist attacks in Pakistan.”
The defence minister highlighted Pakistan’s continuing role in counter-terrorism, using ongoing operations against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Islamic State as an example.
The minister “welcomed SCO’s efforts against the ‘three evils’ — terrorism, separatism, and extremism — and emphasised the need to strengthen cooperation in cyber security, anti-narcotics, and counter-extremist ideologies”, PTV’s report read.
During his address, Asif also called for a ceasefire in Gaza and emphasised the need for a stable Afghanistan “for regional connectivity and long-term stability”.
However, a joint communique could not be signed by all members due to what the Indian foreign ministry deemed “a lack of
consensus on referring to ‘terrorism’”.-Courtesy Reuters
