Bilawal Bhutto Zardari of Pakistan was treated appropriately as the foreign minister of a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), but India called him out for being the "promoter, justifier, and spokesperson" of the terrorism industry, which is Pakistan's mainstay, during the meeting of foreign ministers, according to external affairs minister S Jaishankar.
After the meeting, Jaishankar launched a harsh, if not unprecedented, attack on Pakistan, saying that terrorists and their victims cannot coexist in the same room and that Pakistan's credibility was eroding faster than its foreign exchange reserves.
Responding to a query about Bilawal’s peace overtures in which he had told the Pakistani media that ties should not be allowed to remain hostage to history, Jaishankar said, “Victims of terrorism don’t sit with perpetrators of terrorism. Victims call it out and delegitimize it. To come here and preach hypocritically as if we are on the same boat… I don’t want to jump the gun (on Rajouri attack) but we are all feeling outraged.”
“Don’t know if peace is our destiny but terrorism certainly can’t be any country’s destiny. You can’t do terrorism and speak about peace in the same breath,” Jaishankar said, responding to Bilawal’s remark that “peace is our destiny”.
After a rather quiet SCO welcome meal earlier in the day, India and Pakistan met again to discuss cross-border terrorism at the end of the foreign ministers' conference. Jaishankar reminded the member-states that combating terrorism was one of the original mandates of the SCO and also tweeted later, responding to his counterpart Bilawal’s assertion that state actors must not be conflated with non-state actors, that they should not allow anybody — individual or state — to hide behind non-state actors.
Addressing the meeting, Bilawal said terrorism should not be weaponised for “diplomatic point scoring”. Jaishankar countered it at his press briefing later by saying Bilawal had unconsciously revealed a mindset. “They seem to think terrorism is legitimate and normal and can be weaponised. Am I supposed to put up with it? We are only exposing Pakistan politically and diplomatically,” he said.