Washington: A senior White House official on Thursday said, Pakistan is actively enhancing its long-range ballistic missile capabilities, with the potential to extend its reach beyond South Asia. This development raises concerns as it could enable the country to target locations as far as the United States.
Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer said, Islamabad’s conduct raised ” real questions” about the aim of its ballistic missile program.
“Candidly, it’s hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States,” Finer told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace audience.
The number of nuclear-armed states with missiles that can reach the US homeland “is very small and they tend to be adversarial,” he continued, naming Russia, North Korea and China.
In a statement he said, “Pakistan has advanced its missile technology to a more sophisticated level, progressing from long-range ballistic missile systems to the capability for testing much larger rocket motors,”
His speech came a day after Washington announced a new round of sanctions related to Pakistan’s ballistic missile development programme, including for the first time against the state-run defence agency that oversees the programme.
