Defence ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), meeting in China, failed to adopt a joint statement due to a lack of consensus on references to “terrorism,” India’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.
SCO is a 10-nation Eurasian security and political grouping whose members include China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Their defence ministers’ meeting was held as a precursor to the annual summit of their leaders set for the autumn.
Lack Of Member Consensus
“Certain members, member countries, could not reach consensus on certain issues and hence the document could not be finalised on our side,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters at a weekly media briefing.
“India wanted concerns on terrorism reflected in the document, which was not acceptable to one particular country, and therefore the statement was not adopted,” he said, without naming the country.
India’s Objection
Indian media reported that New Delhi had refused to sign the document after it omitted a reference to the April 22 terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, in which 26 people were killed.
India blamed Pakistan for the attack, but Islamabad rejected the accusation. The deadly terrorist attack led to the worst fighting in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours after India struck terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Pakistan denied that the targets had anything to do with “terrorism” and that they were civilian facilities.
No Reactions From Pakistan, China
The foreign ministries of China and Pakistan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on India’s statement.
Earlier on Thursday, when asked about the joint statement, a Chinese defence ministry spokesperson said the meeting had “achieved successful results”, without elaborating.
It was the first time that senior ministers from India and Pakistan had shared a stage since their clash in May.
(With inputs from Reuters)
