New Delhi: For the first time since their latest military confrontation, the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan shared a platform at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin. While both carefully avoided naming the other, the shadow of the Pahalgam terror attack and the four-day drone-and-missile clashes loomed large over their remarks.

Defending India’s cross-border strikes in response to the Pahalgam incident, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar urged the SCO to adopt an “uncompromising” approach to terrorism. Speaking at the foreign ministers’ meeting on Tuesday (July 15), he described the attack as “deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir, while sowing a religious divide”.

He referred to the UN Security Council (UNSC)’s condemnation of the attack, which called for its perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors to be held accountable.

India has often cited the UNSC statement as justification for Operation Sindoor, the targeted strikes on terror infrastructure in Pakistan that triggered a four-day military exchange involving drones and missiles.

“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’. We have since done exactly that and will continue doing so.”

There are three SCO members on the Council this year, with Russia and China being the permanent members, while Pakistan is the non-permanent member.

Jaishankar reminded the gathering that the SCO was founded to counter “terrorism, separatism and extremism”, and stressed that the grouping must stay true to its founding principles.

“It is imperative that the SCO take an uncompromising position on this challenge,” he said.

Jaishankar also noted that the SCO could only be effective on the global stage if its members aligned themselves behind a “shared agenda”. “That means taking everybody on board,” he added.

His remarks came a day after he held bilateral talks with senior Chinese officials in Beijing. Jaishankar’s visit, the first by an Indian foreign minister to China in five years, came amid a thaw in relations following the resolution of the military standoff along the Line of Actual Control.

Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ishaq Dar, in his remarks, also stopped short of naming India, but criticised the rush to assign blame for the Pahalgam attack “without a credible investigation or verifiable evidence”, which he said had brought the region to the edge of serious conflict.

He reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to the ceasefire but warned against the normalisation of the “arbitrary use of force”.

India, for its part, does not refer to the agreement as a ceasefire but a “cessation of hostilities”, and has rejected claims that any external mediation was involved. While US President Donald Trump has claimed credit for brokering a ceasefire, New Delhi maintained it resulted from direct military-to-military communication.

Stressing that regional stability could only be achieved through dialogue and diplomacy, Dar added, “Strict adherence to bilateral agreements would be equally important in this regard.”

After the Pahalgam attack, India had announced that it was placing the Indus Waters Treaty “in abeyance”. The 1960 agreement governs the sharing of water between the two countries.

“The events unfolding since April 22,” he added, “reaffirm a central truth of South Asian geopolitics: the peaceful settlement of longstanding disputes is imperative for enduring peace in the region”.

Beyond the India-Pakistan flashpoint, Jaishankar also raised Afghanistan, urging SCO members to step up development assistance, with India pledging to do so.

He also flagged the need to resolve challenges impeding regional trade and transit.

“One of them is the lack of assured transit within the SCO space. Its absence undermines the seriousness of advocating cooperation in economic areas,” he said, while also backing the International North South Transport Corridor, which India hopes will gather momentum.

Jaishankar noted that the meeting came at a time of “considerable disorder” in the global system, marked by rising conflict, coercion and economic instability.

The collective task before the SCO, he said, was to stabilise the international order and “de-risk various dimensions” while addressing shared challenges.

A press release issued by the SCO secretariat stated that the foreign ministers focussed on preparing for the outcome documents of the leaders’ summit to be held in autumn. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to travel to China for the summit.

No separate joint statement was issued at the end of the foreign ministers’ meeting, as has been the practice for the last several years.

India had last month blocked the issuing of a joint statement after the defence ministers' meeting on grounds that it had not explicitly addressed New Delhi’s concerns on Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism.

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