Organisation\u2019s members say perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of such attacks must be held accountable
\nTIANJIN: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders on Monday strongly condemned recent terrorist attacks in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s (IIOJK) Pahalgam area, on the Jaffar Express, and in Khuzdar, pledging deeper multilateral cooperation and concrete measures to combat terrorism.
\nIn a joint statement issued after the Council of Heads of State meeting in Tianjin, the leaders stressed that perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of such attacks must be held accountable, reaffirming their strong commitment to combating terrorism, separatism and extremism.
\nThe SCO members underlined the unacceptability of using terrorist and extremist groups for political or selfish purposes, while recognising the primary role of sovereign states in countering these threats.
\nPakistan and India recently engaged in a four-day armed conflict following the April 22 Pahalgam attack. New Delhi, without offering any evidence, claimed that Islamabad was behind the attack \u2014 allegations that Pakistan has denied.
\nIn response to India\u2019s cross-border strikes, Pakistan had launched Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos after downing six Indian Air Force jets, including three Rafales.
\nAfter the brief war, India in June refused to sign a joint document during a high-level SCO Defence Ministers\u2019 meeting in China due to its mentioning terrorist activities in Pakistan\u2019s Balochistan and lack of reference to the Pahalgam incident. The huddle decided not to issue a joint statement over a lack of consensus on the terrorism issue.
\nHowever, Pakistan secured a major win after the United States formally designated the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and its militant faction, the Majeed Brigade, as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). Majeed Brigade was also listed as an alias to BLA\u2019s previous listing as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) group.
\nThe India-backed BLA, first designated as an SDGT in 2019, claimed responsibility for the March hijacking of the Jaffar Express train travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, which left 31 civilians and security personnel martyred and saw more than 300 passengers taken hostage.
\nToday\u2019s declaration \u2014 signed by all SCO members \u2014 also highlighted the importance of multilateral cooperation in addressing terrorism and its financing, noting the outcome of the International High-Level Conference on Border Security under the Dushanbe Process. The next round of the conference will be held in New York in 2026, the statement added.
\nThe leaders appreciated the role of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) in facilitating joint counterterrorism exercises, information-sharing, and monitoring efforts. They noted the results of the joint anti-terrorism drills \u201cInteraction\u2013Anti-Terror\u20132024\u201d held in China\u2019s Xinjiang region last July, and affirmed readiness to expand such initiatives.
\nTo counter extremist ideology, the SCO members adopted a new 2026\u20132030 Program of Cooperation, aimed at implementing the Convention on Countering Extremism signed in Astana in 2017. The program focuses on preventing the spread of radical ideologies, religious intolerance, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, and racial discrimination within the SCO region.
\nMiddle East crisis
\nMeanwhile, the SCO member states also noted that the only possible way to ensure peace and stability in the Middle East is through a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian question.
\nThey strongly condemned the military strikes by Israel and the United States against Iran in June 2025.
\n\u201cSuch aggressive actions against civilian targets, including nuclear energy infrastructure, which resulted in the death of civilians, constitute a gross violation of the principles and norms of international law and the UN Charter, and an infringement on the sovereignty of Iran,\u201d the declaration added.
\nThe SCO members undermined regional and international security, and have serious implications for global peace and stability.
\n\u201cThey noted that physical nuclear safety and security of nuclear facilities must be ensured on a permanent basis, including during periods of armed conflict, in order to protect the population and the environment from harm,\u201d it added.
\nXi and Putin round on West
\nDuring the summit aimed at putting Beijing front and centre of regional relations, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin took turns to swipe at the West.
\nXi told the SCO leaders that the global international situation was becoming more \u201cchaotic and intertwined\u201d. The Chinese leader also slammed \u201cbullying behaviour\u201d from certain countries \u2014 a veiled reference to the United States.
\n\u201cThe security and development tasks facing member states have become even more challenging,\u201d he added in his address in the northern port city of Tianjin.
\n\u201cWith the world undergoing turbulence and transformation, we must continue to follow the Shanghai spirit \u2026 and better perform the functions of the organisation,\u201d Xi said.
\nPutin used his speech to defend Russia\u2019s Ukraine offensive, blaming the West for triggering the three-and-a-half-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands and devastated much of eastern Ukraine.
\n\u201cThis crisis wasn\u2019t triggered by Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine, but was a result of a coup in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West,\u201d Putin said. \u201cThe second reason for the crisis is the West\u2019s constant attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO.\u201d
\nNew global order
\nMeanwhile, Chinese President Xi pressed his vision for a new global security and economic order \u2014 Global Governance Initiative (GGI) \u2014 that prioritises the \u201cGlobal South\u201d, in a direct challenge to the United States.
\n\u201cWe must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practise true multilateralism,\u201d Xi said, in a thinly veiled swipe at the United States and President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff policies.
\n\u201cGlobal governance has reached a new crossroads,\u201d he added.
\nOutlining the framework, the Chinese president said the initiative rests on five principles: adhering to sovereign equality, abiding by international rule of law, practising multilateralism, adopting a people-centered approach, and focusing on real actions.
\nPutin, whose country has forged even closer economic and security ties with China amid the fallout from the Ukraine war, said the SCO had revived \u201cgenuine multilateralism\u201d, with national currencies increasingly used in mutual settlements.
\n\u201cThis, in turn, lays the political and socio-economic groundwork for the formation of a new system of stability and security in Eurasia,\u201d Putin said.
\n\u201cThis security system, unlike Euro-centric and Euro-Atlantic models, would genuinely consider the interests of a broad range of countries, be truly balanced, and would not allow one country to ensure its own security at the expense of others.\u201d
\nXi called for the creation of a new SCO development bank, in what would be a major step towards the bloc\u2019s long-held aspiration of developing an alternative payment system that circumvents the U.S. dollar and the power of US sanctions.
\nBeijing will provide 2 billion yuan ($280 million) of free aid to member states this year and a further 10 billion yuan of loans to an SCO banking consortium.
\nChina will also build an artificial intelligence cooperation centre for SCO nations, which are also invited to participate in China\u2019s lunar research station, Xi added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Organisation\u2019s members say perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of such attacks must be held accountable TIANJIN: The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders on Monday strongly condemned recent terrorist attacks in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s (IIOJK) Pahalgam area, on the Jaffar Express, and in Khuzdar, pledging deeper multilateral cooperation and concrete measures to combat terrorism. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":86221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86242,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86236\/revisions\/86242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}