India talks tough on terrorism as it hosts SCO foreign ministers

Pakistan's top diplomat present in person for Jaishankar's thinly veiled jabs. 

India's foreign minister told a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on Friday that channels for financing terrorism "must be seized and blocked without distinction," in a thinly veiled dig at Pakistan.

More broadly, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar warned that multiple global crises have undermined trust in international institutions, while the SCO moved toward adding new "dialogue partners," including military-ruled Myanmar.

"We firmly believe that there can be no justification for terrorism and it must be stopped in all its forms and manifestations, including cross-border terrorism," Jaishankar said in his opening remarks at the SCO foreign ministers' meeting in the western Indian state of Goa. "Members need not be reminded that combating terrorism is one of the original mandates of the SCO."

There was little doubt that Jaishankar's comments were aimed at Pakistan, which is also an SCO member and was represented at the meeting by Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. India often blames Islamabad for sponsoring cross-border terrorism in Kashmir -- long a focus of tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

The China-led SCO, hosted this year by India for the first time, includes some awkward bedfellows. Besides Pakistan, New Delhi is also at odds with Beijing along their Himalayan border, where their forces engaged in deadly hand-to-hand combat in 2020.

After meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Thursday, Jaishankar tweeted that the two had a detailed discussion on the bilateral relationship. "Focus remains on resolving outstanding issues and ensuring peace and tranquility in the border areas," he wrote.

China's state news agency Xinhua on Friday quoted Qin as expressing China's willingness to deepen coordination and collaboration with India on international and regional issues.

The SCO gathering in Goa, where ministers arrived on Thursday, followed a similar meeting of the grouping's defense chiefs late last month. There, too, India hit out at Pakistan without naming names, while holding frank discussions with China about the border.

But Bhutto Zardari's physical presence in Goa added to the drama this time. Islamabad attended the previous meeting of defense ministers online.

Bhutto Zardari's trip marked the first foreign ministerial visit to India from Pakistan since 2011. The last time a high-level representative from Islamabad visited India was in 2014, when then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended Indian leader Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony.

Jaishankar on Friday welcomed Bhutto with a "namaste," the Indian way of greeting people by joining one's own hands together. Bhutto Zardari reciprocated the gesture. Sources said the two also shook hands during a dinner hosted by New Delhi on Thursday evening, where the media was not invited.

Jaishankar and Bhutto Zardari were not expected to hold bilateral talks.

For his part, Bhutto Zardari told his SCO counterparts on Friday that his presence in Goa was the most powerful indication of the importance Pakistan places on the bloc. As for terrorism, he said, "Let's not get caught up in weaponizing terrorism for diplomatic point scoring."

"I and my country are firmly committed to be part of regional and global efforts for eradicating this menace," he added, according to text of his remarks posted on Pakistan's Foreign Ministry website.

He and Jaishankar did appear to find at least some common ground on Friday. They both, along with Russia's Sergey Lavrov, called on Afghanistan's Taliban to ensure a representative government and preserve the rights of women and minorities. "A united international community must continue to urge the Afghan authorities to adopt universally accepted principles of political inclusivity, and respecting the rights of all Afghans, including girls' right to education," Bhutto Zardari said.

The SCO was founded in Shanghai in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 2017, India and Pakistan were inducted as full members in the first expansion of the organization.

On the sidelines of this week's meeting, memorandums of understanding were signed on granting the grouping's dialogue partner status to Kuwait, Maldives, Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates. The four countries' envoys to India inked the memorandums with SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming, according to a statement published on the SCO website on Saturday.

Dialogue partner status allows countries to participate in SCO events at the invitation of member states. The SCO has six other such partners -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey -- while it has four observer nations, namely Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. Jaishankar also said the SCO foreign ministers assessed progress on admitting Iran and Belarus as new members.

Jaishankar said India attaches "great importance" to the development of multifaceted cooperation in the SCO. He referred to Prime Minister Modi's framing of India's priorities for the SCO using the acronym SECURE, which stands for security, economic development, connectivity, unity, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and environmental protection.

The Indian minister also indirectly referred to the Ukraine war. "As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical upheavals, the world is today facing a multitude of challenges," he said. "These events have disrupted global supply chains, leading to a serious impact on the supply of energy, food and fertilizers and cascading effects on developing nations."

These crises, he said, have also exposed "a credibility and trust deficit in the ability of global institutions to manage challenges in a timely and efficient manner."

But he said the same challenges present an opportunity for SCO members to collaborate. "With more than 40% of the world's population within the SCO, our collective decisions will surely have a global impact."

Later in the evening, Jaishankar responded to a series of questions on Pakistan, including its foreign minister's remarks on terrorism, at a press conference which was also attended by the visiting Pakistani media.

"As a promoter, justifier, and I'm sorry to say, spokesperson of a terrorism industry, which is the mainstay of Pakistan, [Bhutto Zardari's] positions were called out and they were countered, including at the SCO meeting itself."

"Victims of terrorism do not sit together with perpetrators of terrorism to discuss terrorism. Victims of terrorism defend themselves, counter acts of terrorism, they call it out, they delegitimize it and that's exactly what's happening," he said in response to a query about Islamabad suggesting that the two sides discuss combating the menace. "On this terrorism matter, I would say Pakistan's credibility is depleting even faster than its forex reserves."

On the Chinese readout of the Qin-Jaishankar Thursday meeting describing the situation along the boundary of the two countries as stable, Jaishankar said that "there is an abnormal position in the border areas ... and we had a very frank discussion about it."

"India-China relations are not normal and cannot be normal if peace and tranquility in the border areas is disturbed," he added.

(Nikkei Asia)