By The SATimes News Service
New Delhi: India walked out of a meeting of National Security Advisers (NSA) of member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) after Pakistan projected a “fictitious” map showing Indian territories as part of Pakistan.
NSA Ajit Doval walked out of the conference to protest what India called “blatant disregard to the advisory by the host against it and in violation of the norms of the meeting”.
Hitting out at Pakistan, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that at the meeting … The Pakistani NSA deliberately projected a fictitious map that Pakistan has recently been propagating.
Russia as the chair, sources added, tried very hard to persuade Pakistan not to do so.
Srivastava said Pakistan’s action was in blatant disregard to the advisory by the host against it and in violation of the norms of the meeting. After consultation with the host, the Indian NSA left the meeting in protest at that juncture.
Sources said 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.
Russia, sources said, conveyed to Doval that it does not support what Pakistan has done and hopes that Islamabad’s provocative act will not affect India’s participation in SCO.
