India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said all member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation should respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“India has always been resolute in working in sync with principles laid out in the SCO charter,” the prime minister said, during the virtual meeting of the eight member countries. “But it is unfortunate that there have been repeated efforts to unnecessarily bring bilateral issues in the SCO agenda which is in violation of the SCO spirit.”
Modi’s remarks at the summit are being seen as an indirect message to Pakistan and China, whose heads of state Imran Khan and Xi Jinping also attended the conference. Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired the meeting.
The prime minister’s remarks came amid an ongoing standoff along India’s border with China that has hit a stalemate since May, when Chinese troops moved to take control of the territory that had been patrolled by Indian soldiers for decades. The initial scuffles led up to a pitched battle – without firearms – in June that saw 20 Indian soldiers killed, with Beijing refusing to release casualty numbers on its side.
Both India and China have accused each other of crossing into rival territory and of firing shots for the first time in 45 years. The two countries have held at least eight rounds of talks with the participation of military, diplomatic, and political officials. However, the standoff has persisted, although no new military aggression has been reported for over a month now. On November 6, India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat said the situation along the border remains tense, adding that there was a possibility of confrontations and unprovoked military actions spiralling into a larger conflict.
The prime minister also seems to have alluded to Pakistan’s attempts to raise Jammu and Kashmir in international forums with some help from China. New Delhi and Islamabad have not held official dialogue since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which killed 166 people.
In October, India had criticised Pakistan for raising the Kashmir matter at a virtual meeting of the foreign ministers of the Commonwealth of Nations, saying that Islamabad is a “globally-acknowledged promoter of state-sponsored terrorism”, which pretends to be a victim. On the same day, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had, without naming India, claimed that a “state in South Asia” had been targeting its religious minority groups to foment division and hatred.
On Tuesday, at the SCO summit, Modi said that India believes in order to enhance connectivity, it was important that “we move forward while respecting one another’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
The Indian prime minister said that the country will use its capacity in Covid-19 vaccine production and distribution to help all of humanity that has been fighting the pandemic. He also noted that India’s pharma industry has sent sent essential medicines to more than 150 countries.
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