On Friday at the SCO summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said countries sponsoring, funding and aiding terrorism must be held accountable. He was called for a global conference to combat the menace.
The Prime Minister said, “During my visit to Sri Lanka last Sunday, I visited the St Anthony’s church, where I witnessed the ugly face of terrorism which claims the lives of innocents anywhere.”
Countries will have to come out of their narrow purview to unite against it in order to combat against the terrorism, Modi said in presence of the Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan.
Prime Minister also invited SCO member to corporate under the SCO Regional Anti Terrorist Structure (RATS) against terrorism. “Countries sponsoring, aiding and funding terrorism must be held accountable,” he said.
“Literature and culture provide our societies with a positive activity, especially since they stop the spread of radicalisation among the youths in our society,” he added later.
He also urged SCO leaders to organise a global conference on terrorism. Modi arrived in the Kyrgyz capital on Thursday for the two-day SCO summit. The SCO is a China-led eight-member economic and security bloc with India and Pakistan were admitted to the grouping in 2017.
India had in the past accused Pakistan for carrying out terrorist attacks in the country nation and asked it to quit supporting terror outfits operating from the country.
India did not engage with Pakistan since an attack on the Air Force base at Pathankot in January of 2016 by a Pakistan-based terror group, maintaining that talks and terror did not go together.
Early this year, tensions wired up between India and Pakistan after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) killed 40 CRPF personnel in Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
Amid mounting outrage, the Indian Air Force (IAF) carried out a counter-terror operation, hitting the biggest JeM training camp in Balakot in Pakistan on February 26. The next day, Pakistan Air Force retaliated and downed a MiG-21 in aerial combat and captured an IAF pilot, who was later handed over to India which was later mentioned as ‘the peace gesture’.
