Coronavirus pandemic 'litmus test' for multilateralism, says Qureshi

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic was a "litmus test" for multilateralism and expressed confidence that the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was well equipped to tackle the crisis.

Speaking at an extraordinary virtual meeting of the SCO Foreign Ministers, Qureshi said that the pandemic posed a challenge of unprecedented scale and magnitude to humanity that necessitated coordinated responses.

He urged the SCO member states to work jointly to contain the virus that has killed nearly 300,000 people worldwide.

Qureshi said the crisis "was a litmus test for multilateralism, and the SCO was well equipped to tackle it," according to the Foreign Office.

He briefed the SCO Foreign Ministers on Pakistan's coordinated response to COVID-19 covering the public health as well as the economic aspects of the crisis. He observed that even though infections were spreading, Pakistan had seen relatively low fatalities.

Qureshi in his address also "stressed the need for the SCO to reject stigmatization and discrimination of any community in the context of COVID-19 on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity."