India, June 27 -- India refused to sign on for a joint statement at a meeting of defence ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) because one country refused to include a reference to terrorism in the document, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Friday in a tacit swipe at Pakistan.

The objective of the SCO is to fight terrorism, and defence minister Rajnath Singh refused to accept the joint statement because it did not contain a reference to terror, Jaishankar told reporters on the margins of an event organised by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) to mark the 50th anniversary of the Emergency.

"The objective of the SCO was to fight terrorism. This organisation exists to fight terrorism," Jaishankar said...