NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Friday backed defence minister Rajnath Singh’s decision not to sign a joint statement at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ meeting in China. He said India took a principled stand after one member nation blocked a reference to terrorism, a core focus of the organisation.“Let me give you some context because I think it’s important,” Jaishankar said at a press conference in New Delhi, according to news agency ANI.“The SCO was created to fight terrorism. That’s its primary objective. But when Rajnath Ji attended the defence ministers’ meeting, and there was a discussion on the outcome document, one country, and I think you can guess which, refused to include any mention of terrorism,” Jaishankar said without naming Pakistan.According to Jaishankar, Singh rightly declined to support the joint document in the absence of that crucial reference. “SCO functions on consensus. If even one country objects, nothing moves forward. Rajnath Ji clearly said that if terrorism is not acknowledged, we will not sign the statement.”

SCO statement had no mention of

Pahalgam: Reports

At a conference of SCO defence ministers’ conclave, Rajnath Singh demanded inclusion of the terror attack in the communique, while the Pakistani side pressed for having a paragraph on militant activities in Balochistan in an apparent attempt to blame New Delhi, top sources told news agency PTI.On certain reports claiming that the declaration had found a mention of the Balochistan crisis, but failed to mention the Pahalgam terror attack, sources clarified to the news agency ANI that the reports were completely incorrect. According to sources, the alphabet soup of the declaration document did not have either B (Balochistan) or P (Pahalgam) in its text. The document did not even have a reference to T (terrorism). This prompted India to back off from signing the final declaration.