SCO summit: Pakistan present as EAM S. Jaishankar condemns "3 evils" behind Pahalgam attack

Amid a thaw in bilateral ties between India and China owing to high-level meetings at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Foreign Ministers' Summit, Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar on Tuesday made a strong comment on the “3 evils” that the bloc was founded to combat.

In the presence of officials from all 10 nations of the Eurasian bloc—including those from Pakistan—he strongly denounced terrorism as one of those “three evils”, in addition to separatism and extremism.

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In that regard, he cited the example of the Pahalgam terror attack as a”graphic example”, recalling a UN Security Council statement—and accordingly condemning it “in the strongest terms” on various platforms. 

“(The Pahalgam attack) was deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir, while sowing a religious divide,” he said in a statement that did not, however, explicitly name Pakistan.

India's choice of words and actions at summits like the SCO has been criticised by the Congress, with Rahul Gandhi lamenting that the EAM was “running a full-blown circus aimed at destroying India’s foreign policy”, in response to Jaishankar's meeting with Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, earlier today.

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Notably, since the last bilateral meeting between PM Modi and President Jinping, China had actively supported Pakistan during the 88-hour tensions that followed Operation Sindoor, which India has clarified was a response for the Pahalgam attack of April 22.

In that regard, earlier in the day, Pakistan's deputy PM and foreign minister Ishaq Dar stated in an X post that he had been "delighted" to meet Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

"As iron-clad brothers and All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partners, we remain committed to deepening Pak-China enduring friendship and advancing shared regional goals," Dar added.

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“It is imperative that the SCO, to remain true to its founding objectives, take an uncompromising position on this challenge (the three evils),” Jaishankar urged, in his address to the bloc.

The 10-member Eurasian security and political bloc has China, Russia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus as its members.