Pakistan: Missile Test Not Message
Pakistan said Tuesday it successfully test-fired a medium-range, nuclear-capable missile that could hit many cities in neighboring India, but defense officials said it was not intended as a message to the rival country.
India was informed in advance of the test of the Ghauri V missile, which has a range of 930 miles. The launch, at an undisclosed location, was witnessed by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, an army statement said.
A senior defense official said on condition of anonymity that Pakistan was not sending "any wrong signal to India" by test-firing the missile — at a time when the two nations are pursuing peace talks aimed at resolving more than a half-century of enmity.
Officials contacted at the Indian ministries of defense and external affairs had no immediate comment on the test.
Despite the start of the peace process early this year, both countries routinely conduct missile tests. Pakistan also test-fired the Ghauri missile on May 29 and June 4.
On Tuesday, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Aziz issued a statement, saying "the nation is proud of our scientists and holds them in the highest esteem for making the national defense impregnable."
The Ghauri missile is produced by Pakistan's main weapons facility, the Khan Research Laboratories — named after A.Q. Khan, the disgraced chief scientist behind Pakistan's nuclear program.
Early this year, Khan confessed to the nation that he had sold nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea without government approval. He was pardoned by Musharraf.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the Ghauri missile is a copy of North Korea's Nodong missile — but Pakistan says it developed the missile itself. Khan's group handed the missile to the army in 2003.
It is named after historical Muslim ruler, Shahbuddin Ghauri, feted in Pakistan for capturing western parts of India in the 12th century.
Pakistan became a declared nuclear power on May 28, 1998, when it conducted underground nuclear tests, in response to earlier tests carried out by India.
The two countries have a history of bitter relations and have fought three wars — two of them over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir — since independence from Britain in 1947, and they nearly fought a fourth in 2001-2.
There has since been a thaw in relations. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Musharraf met last month and agreed to continue efforts to resolve all of their countries' disputes, including Kashmir.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on the countries after the 1998 tests, but Musharraf managed to get those restrictions — and separate ones imposed after the 1999 coup in which he came to power — lifted through his alliance with the U.S. war on terrorism.