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Pakistan modifying US missile posed a danger to India, says Sureesh Mehta | Outgoing Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta on Monday alleged that Pakistan's attempt to modify Harpoon missile
posed a danger to India's interest. As per media reports, the Obama administration
has protested to Pakistan for illegally modifying U.S.-made missiles to expand
its ability to hit land-based targets. Citing senior administration and Congressional
officials, the reports said the charge came in late June through an unpublicized
diplomatic protest to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and other top Pakistani
officials. The accusation, made amid growing concerns about Pakistan's increasingly
rapid conventional and nuclear weapons development, triggered a new round of U.S.-Pakistani
tensions, the report added. Reacting to the same, Mehta said that US authorities
are constantly being told that their aid to Pakistan is not necessarily used for
self-defence. "Here are certain things which people do. Like if we made our own
Brahmos (a supersonic cruise missile), it was for the sea, then it become land
version, so there are certain things that can be done to it. This is a danger
of proliferation which we have also been mentioning to Americans at all times
that what you give them (Pakistan) will not necessarily be targeted for self defence.
And this in any case has got nothing to do with self-defence; it is obviously
against Indian interest," Mehta added. A senior Pakistani official called the
accusation "incorrect," saying that the missile tested was developed by Pakistan,
just as it had modified North Korean designs to build a range of land-based missiles
that could strike India, according to the Times. U.S. officials said the disputed
weapon is a conventional one based on the Harpoon antiship missiles that were
sold to Pakistan during the Reagan administration as a defensive weapon, the newspaper
reported, but the charges come as the Obama administration is seeking Congressional
approval for 7.5 billion dollars in aid for Pakistan over the next five years.
U.S. military and intelligence officials suspect Pakistan of modifying the Harpoon
sold to them in the 1980s, which would violate the Arms Control Export Act. Pakistan
denied the charge and said it developed the missile, the media report said. According
to experts, the missiles would bolster Pakistan's ability to threaten India, stoking
fears of heating up the two nations' arms race.
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