Jaishankar slams Pakistan, backs Rajnath Singh's decision of not signing SCO joint statement

A day after India refused to sign the joint declaration at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in China over concerns that terrorism was not included in the document Foreign Minister S Jaishankar backed Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's refusal to sign the joint statement.

Explaining the reason behind the decision, Jaishankar without taking the name of Pakistan said “one country” part of the SCO wanted no mention to terrorism in the joint statement despite the SCO formed with the objective of fighting terrorism.

"The SCO was formed with the objective of fighting terrorism. When Rajnath Singh went to the Defence Ministers' Meeting and there was a discussion on the outcome document, one country said they do not want a reference to that," said the External Affairs Minister.

He further backed Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on the issue and said, "Rajnath Singh's view rightly was, without that reference, that when the main purpose of the organisation is to fight terrorism, and you are not allowing a reference to that, he expressed his unwillingness to accept... SCO runs with unanimity."

"So Rajnath ji clearly said that if there is no mention of terrorism in the statement, we will not sign it," he added.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, did not sign the document as it “would have diluted India’s stand."

Notably, the document did not have mention of the deadly Pahalgam terror attack that happened on April 22, but included reference to incidents in Pakistan.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at the SCO meeting that there should be no double standards on terrorism. He added that countries that support such acts must be called out. He further said that terrorism and peace cannot exist together.

“I believe that the biggest challenges that we are facing in our region are related to peace, security and trust deficit. And the root cause of these problems is increasing radicalisation, extremism and terrorism,” he said.

SCO is a major grouping of 10 countries – China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus- that focuses on issues like counterterrorism, connectivity, etc. China is the host of the grouping for this year and will also be hosting the defence minister meeting in July and the summit in September.