Jaishankar snubs Pakistan at SCO meet, says ‘Bilawal Bhutto spokesperson for terror industry’
New Delhi: For the first time in at least 12 years, a Pakistan Foreign Minister visited India as Bilawal Bhutto landed in Goa to attend the Shanghai Corporation Organisation (SCO) Foreign Ministers meeting held on May 4 and 5.
The visit garnered many eyeballs with speculations over India-Pakistan relations heading towards improvement. However, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar made it amply clear that India is “politically and diplomatically exposing Pakistan.”
Speaking on Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s arrival in India, Jaishankar said that he visited India as the Foreign Minister of an SCO Member State and that is part of multilateral diplomacy. He also urged that the visit should not be seen as anything more than that.
“As a Foreign Minister of an SCO member state, Mr Bhutto Zardari was treated accordingly. As a promoter, justifier and spokesperson of a terrorism industry which is the mainstay of Pakistan, his positions were called out and they were countered including at the SCO meeting itself,” said EAM Dr S Jaishankar.
He added, “We are not scoring diplomatic points. We are politically and diplomatically exposing Pakistan before the world. As a victim of terrorism, I am completely entitled to do so…You not only commit terrorism, but you also say please do not even speak about it…To me, it speaks so much about the mindset of that country…”
Jaishankar said that Pakistan’s credibility on the matter of terrorism is depleting fast.
“They are committing acts of terrorism. I don’t want to jump the gun on what happened today but we are all feeling equally outraged. On this matter, the terrorism matter, I would say that Pakistan’s credibility is depleting faster than even its Forex reserves,” he said.
The EAM’s remark came on a day when five Indian Army soldiers were killed in an encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch. The terrorists, suspected to be Pakistanis, had ambushed an army truck last week, killing five other soldiers.
Notably, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of assassinated Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is the first Pakistani Foreign Minister to visit India in nearly 12 years.