NEW DELHI: India will exercise its right to defend its citizens from terrorism, and it expects Quad partners to understand and appreciate that, external affairs minister S Jaishankar told his Quad counterparts in Washington. Going into the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting – ahead of the summit that India will host later this year – the minister drew attention to the recent Pahalgam terrorist attack, saying the world must display zero tolerance.“Victims and perpetrators must never be equated. And India has every right to defend its people against terrorism, and we will exercise that right. We expect our Quad partners to understand and appreciate that,” the minister said in his opening remarks. tnnWon’t deal with terrorists as proxies: EAM Victims and perpetrators must never be equated, EAM Jaishankar said while speaking alongside American secretary of state Marco Rubio and his Australian and Japanese counterparts, Penny Wong and Takeshi Iwaya, respectively. Jaishankar’s comments about India’s expectations from Quad partners on the issue of terror are significant in the light of recent remarks by US President Donald Trump that seemed to draw an equivalence between India and Pakistan. Also, while Quad countries individually condemned the attack, India would have ideally liked them to do so in a joint statement.Earlier, in a conversation with US magazine Newsweek, the minister bluntly said India would not let the West’s fear of a nuclear conflagration constrain its response to future Pakistan-backed terror attacks. “We are very clear there will be no impunity for terrorists, that we will not deal with them any longer as proxies and spare the govt which supports and finances and, in many ways, motivates them. We will not allow nuclear blackmail to prevent us from responding,” he said.“We’ve also heard this for too long… therefore the other guys will come and do horrible things, but you must not do anything because it gets the world worried. Now, we are not going to fall for that. If he is going to come and do things, we are going to go there and hit the people who did this. So no yielding to nuclear blackmail, no impunity to terrorists, no more free pass that they are proxies. And we will do what we have to do to defend our people,” Jaishankar said. Speaking about Quad, the minister said it was committed to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific. “To that end, our endeavours are devoted to promoting a rules-based international order. It is essential that nations of the Indo-Pacific have the freedom of choice, so essential to make right decisions on development and security,” he said.Even as India and others deny that Quad is a security alliance, both Beijing and Moscow see the grouping’s primary objective as containment of China. In his remarks, The EAM highlighted progress in Quad initiatives, including in the maritime domain, logistics, education and political coordination. “India plans to host the next Quad summit. We have some proposals on how to make that productive. I am sure, so do our partners,” he added.