Pakistan yesterday successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile for the second time, without informing rival India, officials said.
The terrain-hugging Hatf VII Babur missile has a range of 500km and can carry all kinds of warheads, a senior military official said.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf witnessed the launch and congratulated the scientists involved, a military statement said.
"The nation was proud of its scientists and engineers, who had once again demonstrated their ability to master rare technologies with ease and professionalism," the statement quoted Musharraf as saying.
"The strategic program, which had come to symbolize the nation's resolve for its security, will continue to go from strength to strength with credible minimum deterrence as the cornerstone," Musharraf said.
Pakistan first tested the indigenously developed Babur -- named after an ancient Mughal emperor -- in August last year and described it as a "milestone" in the country's history.
The foreign office said it did not inform its nuclear-armed rival India about the latest launch. There was no immediate reaction from New Delhi.
Both countries, who conducted tit-for-tat test nuclear detonations in 1998 and have already fought three wars, routinely carry out tests of nuclear-capable missiles.
"We don't have to inform them as we have an agreement which includes only ballistic missile tests, about which the two countries inform each other," foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said yesterday.
"We have proposed to India to include cruise missile tests but they did not agree," she said.
Pakistan again proposed to India that cruise missile tests should be included when the countries' foreign secretaries met in New Delhi in January this year, she said.
"We have yet to hear from them," she added.
The military statement said that "all phases of the planned trajectory were extremely successful and the missile impacted with pinpoint accuracy."
The Babur could in future also be placed in submarines and on surface ships, the statement said.
"The Babur, which has near-stealth capabilities, is a low-flying, terrain-hugging missile with high maneuverability, pinpoint accuracy and radar avoidance features," it added.
Pakistan's nuclear-armed rival India unveiled its first cruise missile, a supersonic joint venture with Russia named the BrahMos, in 2001.
A Pakistani peace group said yesterday that it opposed missile tests by both countries, adding that the arms race in South Asia had impoverished people.
"Both countries should stop the arms race and divert funds towards the development of their people, particularly those living in abject poverty," Kamran Islam of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy said.
Pakistan is at the center of investigations into a nuclear black market run by its disgraced atomic scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed in 2004 to passing atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
RSS