India will participate in a joint anti-terrorism exercise also involving China and Pakistan besides other countries, later this year. The joint exercise titled 'Pabbi-Antiterror-2021' will be organised by
the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and will see participation of all the eight member states.

The decision to hold the exercise was taken at the 36th meeting of RATS held in Tashkent, last week. Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported that delegations of the competent authorities of India, Kazakhstan, China, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the RATS Executive Committee attended the meeting.

Speaking in a virtual regional seminar on the development of judicial and law enforcement cooperation and information exchange, organised by the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Center, the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in partnership with the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia last week, a delegation of the RATS SCO Executive Committee headed by Deputy Director V. V. Barchuk had highlighted the need for creating conditions for combining the efforts of the states of the region in solving priority problems in the fight against terrorism.

Barchuk informed that RATS SCO is working to ensure security in the SCO region, strengthen and develop counter-terrorism cooperation, assist the competent authorities of the SCO Member States in implementing measures to combat illegal trafficking of weapons and ammunition, and prevent their illegal supply to terrorists.

The RATS SCO, as an organisation responsible for coordinating activities in the field of combating terrorism, separatism and extremism in the SCO region, told UN that it is ready to promote its experience and is interested in providing all possible assistance to the relevant UN anti-terrorist units in achieving high-quality, meaningful and significant results within the framework of the project.