- Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged resolving conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy at SCO summit
- He called for united fight against terrorism and opposed double standards on the issue
- PM Modi alluded to Pakistan for supporting terror groups to target India
There is no solution on the battlefield and all wars and conflicts should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kyrgyzstan today.
The regional grouping SCO's summit comes amid the war in the Middle East that has affected global energy supply lines and many economies.
PM Modi, in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, also called for fighting terrorism unitedly.
"We must speak with one voice that there can be no place for double standards on terrorism," he said in the same hall where his Pakistani counterpart Shehbaz Sharif was present. "We must dismantle the entire ecosystem of terrorism, its financing, recruitment, radicalisation and safe havens."
PM Modi's comments directly referred to Pakistan's longtime policy of supporting terror groups to attack India. The killings of tourists in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam by Pakistan-linked terrorists last year had drawn a major response from India in the form of Operation Sindoor. Indian cruise missiles and drones had slammed into infrastructure deep inside Pakistan used for training terrorists and Pakistani military assets.
The prime minister said there should be cooperation in infrastructure projects, provided they respect the sovereign territory of others.
According to analysts, the SCO platform with the attendance of both the Chinese president and the Pakistani prime minister was the most direct channel of putting across India's formal position on the matter, especially with the so-called CPEC passing through Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
CPEC is short for 'China-Pakistan Economic Corridor', a planned 3,000-km-long network of infrastructure projects linking China's Xinjiang region with Pakistan's Gwadar Port.
PM Modi's comments are significant and relevant as the main goals of the SCO are to strengthen mutual trust, friendship and good neighbourliness in addition to encouraging effective and mutually beneficial cooperation in various areas.
The 10-member SCO was founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with India and Pakistan joining as full members in 2017, followed by Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024.
The SCO summit this time is being conducted in an expanded 'SCO-Plus' format, bringing together leaders from more than a dozen other associated countries. Among them are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, Lao President Thongloun Sisoulith and Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe.
