Pahalgam terror attack executed to sow religious divide: EAM Jaishankar at SCO

External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday raised the issue of Pahalgam terror attack at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Tianjin and said member countries needed to remain true to the grouping's founding objectives and maintain an uncompromising position on terrorism.

Jaishankar, who is on his first China visit since the Galwan Valley clashes in June 2020, said the April 22 attack "was deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir while sowing a religious divide".

"The three evils that SCO was founded to combat were terrorism, separatism and extremism. Not surprisingly, they often occur together. Recently, we in India witnessed a graphic example in the terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025. It was deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir while sowing religious divide," Jaishankar pointed out.

"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," the minister said. Among SCO member states, both Russia and China are permanent members of UNSC and Pakistan is a non-permanent member of UNSC for 2025-26.

Jaishankar noted that there was an urgent need for regional cooperation, grounded in mutual trust, to stabilise the global order. "We meet at a time of considerable disorder in the international system. In the last few years, we have seen more conflicts, competition and coercion. Economic instability is also visibly on the rise. The challenge before us is to stabilise the global order, de-risk various dimensions and through it all, address longstanding challenges that threaten our collective interests," he said.