Posted on 03/08/2004 10:58:49 PM PST by HAL9000
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan on Tuesday tested its longest-range missile yet, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting targets deep inside neighboring India, a defense ministry official said.
The official, who did not want to be named, said the test was "100 percent successful."
"It can carry both conventional and unconventional warheads."
He did not disclose where the test was conducted.
The surface-to-surface Shaheen 2 missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles).
Pakistan's previous longest-range missile was the Ghouri tested in 1997, which has a range of 1,300 kilometers (810 miles).
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said Monday that "neighbors and concerned countries," including India, would be informed in advance of the test - which comes despite peace moves in recent months between the South Asian rivals.
The nuclear-armed neighbors have started talks on a roadmap to peace that will include negotiations to solve their dispute over divided Kashmir - the issue at the heart of their five decades of hostility.
Domestically, the test appeared aimed at allaying concerns that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was rolling back the country's nuclear program under international pressure, after Pakistan's top nuclear scientist admitted spreading sensitive technology to other countries.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, confessed in February to proliferating weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Musharraf pardoned Khan but political opponents have blamed the president for initiating an inquiry into Khan in the first place.
Musharraf has vowed to retain Pakistan's nuclear deterrent against larger neighbor India. Pakistan conducted a nuclear test in 1998.
Talat Masood, a former army general and military analyst, said the missile test demonstrated Pakistan's advances in missile technology and would help ease criticism at home in the wake of the nuclear proliferation scandal.
"It gives Pakistan the ability to fire missiles much deeper into India than before," he told AP.
"Politically the government is trying to assure the people that its missiles and nuclear programs are moving ahead, and that the negative fallout of the proliferation affair has not affected any of its affairs."
Khan, the foreign ministry spokesman, said that Pakistan's strategic goal was to have a "minimum credible deterrence."
"We have to test these missiles from time to time," he told a press conference on Monday. "Our reach has to be assured and we have to be in a position to deter aggression and to prevent military coercion and our delivery system has to be sufficient. That said, when we do take the test, we inform neighbors and concerned countries."
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