Op Sindoor: India flags Pakistan ally Turkey, Azerbaijan's presence at SCO
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New Delhi: India has expressed reservations on the presence of Turkey and Azerbaijan, both dialogue partners of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), at the group's Summit in Tianjin, China, early September in the backdrop of the support extended by Ankara and Baku to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.India's reservations were conveyed to the hosts China by India in the runup to the Summit, ET has reliably learnt. As SCO works by consensus, reservation on an issue by one member could be the decisive factor.India and China have been in dialogue on the issue, ET has learnt. While Turkey had assisted Pakistan with defence hardware including drones, Baku provided political support to Islamabad in the backdrop of Pakistan's support against Armenia on Azerbaijan's territorial matters.A preliminary probe into the debris of Pakistani drones thwarted by India's air defence systems revealed that the country used Turkey-made drones. Subsequently, in India, there were growing calls to boycott Turkey and Azerbaijan over their support for Pakistan. Last month external affairs minister S Jaishankar raised the issue of the terror attack in Pahalgam at the SCO foreign ministers meet 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 was on his first China visit since the Galwan Valley clashes in June 2020, said the April 22 attack in Pahalgam, in which 26 people were killed, "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. It was deliberately conducted to undermine the tourism economy of Jammu and Kashmir, while sowing a religious divide," Jaishankar said.
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