New Delhi: India staged a walkout of a virtual Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) NSA meet on Tuesday after Pakistan projected a ‘fictitious’ map claiming Junagadh and Kashmir as part of its territory.
“Russia does not support what Pakistan has done and hopes that Pakistan’s provocative act will not affect India’s participation in the SCO….,” a key government source told ‘Organiser’.
MEA spokesman Anurag Srivastava said responding to media queries that as expected, Pakistan subsequently “went on to present a misleading view of this meeting”.
“At the meeting of the National Security Advisers (NSAs) of member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), hosted by the Chair of the SCO (Russia), the Pakistani NSA deliberately projected a fictitious map that Pakistan has recently been propagating,” Srivastava said.
“This was in blatant disregard to the advisory by the host (Russia) against it and in violation of the norms of the meeting. After consultation with the host, the Indian side left the meeting in protest at that juncture,” he said.
The gory chapter in diplomacy was triggered after the Pakistani representative sat before a “new” political map that showed Kashmir and Junagadh (in Gujarat) as part of its territory.
The government source maintained that the walkout by Doval would “not cast any shadow” on Russian NSA Nikolai Patrushev’s warm personal relationship for his Indian counterpart Doval – “for whom he has the highest regard”.
“Pakistan’s use of a fictitious map as a backdrop for its representative depicting sovereign Indian territories as part of Pakistan is a blatant violation of the SCO Charter and against all its established norms of safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of SCO Member States,” the source said.
Sources further disclosed that India issued its “strong objection” to the use of this “illegal map by Pakistan” and the Russian side, “as the Chair, tried very hard to persuade Pakistan not to do so”.
Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the National Security Council of the Russian Federation, has conveyed that he was personally very grateful to NSA Doval for attending the SCO Summit.
Mr Patrushev also exuded hopes that he would see or interact with Doval at the forthcoming events.
It may be mentioned here that Pakistan had released a new map on August 4 – a day before the first anniversary of the amendment in Article 370 that gave Jammu and Kashmir a special status.
The doing away of Article 370 had left Pakistan leaking its wounds as the government measures fighting Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and ensuring developmental works in Jammu and Kashmir region have gone down well with the local population.
Pakistan at present does not have a ‘formally appointed NSA’ and Islamabad is represented in international meetings by Moeed Yusuf, who is an adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.
