India, Sept. 1 -- Ten weeks can mean a lot in diplomacy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's China visit showed it, notably in how the Pahalgam terror attack has now been pointedly condemned in the September 1 joint declaration of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), of which Pakistan is a full member too.

On June 26, at the SCO Defence Ministers' Meeting held also in China, in the city of Qingdao, India's Rajnath Singh refused to sign a joint declaration as it did not mention the April 22 attack at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 26 people. It mentioned incidents in Pakistan, though.

In the Tianjin declaration, Pakistan is not named in the context of Pahalgam, but it is among the signatories who have condemned terrorism as...