Washington: A senior White House official on Thursday said the long-range ballistic missile that Pakistan developing is an ‘emerging threat’ to the US, Reuters reported.
Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer’s revelation suggest that the ties between Washington and Islamabad hit rough weather after the US had withdrawn troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
This is the first time Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes signaling a shift in objective, which so far had to do with its neighbour India.
Jon Finer, delivering a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that Pakistan was developing ‘sophisticated missile technology’ which would enable the country to test ‘significantly larger rocket motors’.
The process will eventually make Pakistan capable of striking targets ‘well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.’
However, Finer pointed out that nuclear-armed countries with missiles capable of reaching the US is ‘very small’, adding that Pakistan’s actions are ‘anything other than an emerging threat to the United States’.
Only a day before his speech, the US authorities announced new sanctions on Pakistan's ballistic missile development program and the country’s state defence agency for the first time.
Pakistan usually claims that its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs are meant for regional stability, while targeting India.
It is reported citing two senior US officials that the country’s long standing concerns about Pakistan’s missile program have to do with the sizes of rocket engines that Pakistan is developing.
Although the threat is still a decade away, according to the officials, Finer’s speech was aimed at pressing Pakistani officials to answer why the country was developing powerful rocket engines that it refused to do.
Pakistan conducted its first nuclear weapon test in 1998 more than two decades after India’s first test.
However the country went on to stockpile, according to Bulletin of the American Scientists, about 170 nuclear warheads.
The news agency reported that Pakistan embassy had not responded to a request for comment.