Pak developing non-strategic nuclear weapons, reveals US think-tank - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Pakistan is developing non-strategic nuclear weapons in order to enhance its nuclear capability, which would bring it at par with countries like the US and Russia, a leading American think-tank has said. "Today, at least five of the world's nine nuclear weapons States have, or are developing, what appears to meet the definition of a non-strategic nuclear weapon: Russia, the United States, France, Pakistan, and China," The Nation quoted Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project, and Dr Robert S Norris, senior fellow for Nuclear Policy, as saying in the latest issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Like France, Pakistan characterises all its nuclear weapons as strategic. "However, Pakistan is developing a new short-range rocket with nuclear capability that certainly would be characterised as a non-strategic nuclear weapon if it belonged to Russia or the United States. Moreover, even the Pakistani statements about the weapon clearly place it in a different category," Kristensen and Norris further said.