S Jaishankar's Sharp Message On Terrorism In First China Visit In 5 Years

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday raised the issue of the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council in Tianjin and said member countries needed to remain true to the grouping's founding objectives and maintain an uncompromising position on terrorism.

Jaishankar, who is on his first China visit since the Galwan Valley clashes in June 2020, the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, in which 26 people were killed, "was deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir, while sowing a religious divide."

"The UN Security Council, of which some of us are currently members, issued a statement that condemned it in the strongest terms and "underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice," he said while speaking at the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting.

The Minister noted that SCO was founded to combat three evils -- terrorism, separatism and extremism-- which "not surprisingly" often occur together.

"It is imperative that the SCO, to remain true to its founding objectives, take an uncompromising position on this challenge," Jaishankar said.

Jaishankar also noted that there was an urgent need for regional cooperation, grounded in mutual trust, to stabilise the global order.

"We meet at a time of considerable disorder in the international system. In the last few years, we have seen more conflicts, competition and coercion. Economic instability is also visibly on the rise. The challenge before us is to stabilise the global order, de-risk various dimensions and through it all, address longstanding challenges that threaten our collective interests," he said.

Jaishankar said that the world was moving towards greater multipolarity, and it is not just in terms of redistribution of national capacities, but also the emergence of effective groupings like the SCO.

"Our ability to contribute to the shaping of world affairs will naturally depend on how well we come together on a shared agenda. That means taking everybody on board," he said as he called for deepening collaboration within the SCO.