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Pakistan Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile Amid Peace Moves With India
Islamabad (AFP) Nov 29, 2004 Pakistan test-fired a short-range nuclear capable missile Monday in its fifth missile test this year despite ongoing peace talks with nuclear rival India. It was the third test of the "Ghaznavi" or Hatf-III missile, a surface-to-surface projectile with a range of 290 kilometres (180 miles), the military announced in a statement. Most of this year's tests have been seen as bids to ease domestic fears that Pakistan may be pressured to dismantle its atomic programme, after it emerged key nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had been involved in proliferation. "It is aimed at reassuring hawks in Pakistan that the Musharraf government has no plan to freeze the country's nuclear programme," military analyst and retired general Talat Masood told AFP. Pakistan informed its neighbours ahead of the test, the military said. More tests were planned to maintain the pace of its nuclear and missile programme, it added. "The test was part of a series of tests planned... in order to verify certain parameters and to further refine different subsystems of the missile," the military said in a statement. "The flight data collected indicates that all the design parameters have been successfully validated." The launch comes one week after the prime ministers of rival neighbours India and Pakistan met for the first time, in the middle of a step-by-step peace process two years after they nearly went to war. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said he was "happy" about the successful missile test and that the best guarantee of peace in the region was to improve the country's defence capability.
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