Pakistan rejects Trump’s claim of secret nuclear tests

Pakistan has denied claims made by US President Donald Trump that it is secretly testing nuclear weapons.

A senior Pakistani official said that Islamabad will not be the first state to restart nuclear tests.

"Pakistan was not the first to carry out nuclear tests and will not be the first to resume nuclear tests," the official said. Pakistan says that since its last test in 1998, it has followed a "unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing".

Trump claimed that Russia, China, North Korea, and Pakistan have been conducting secret underground tests. He said that Russia and China were conducting tests but were not talking about it. He further stated that he did not want the United States to be the only country that did not test, and he added Pakistan and North Korea to the list.

Pressed further, Trump said that those countries did not go and reveal such information, and that even though they were powerful, the world was large. He added that one could not necessarily know where they were testing, as they carried out tests deep underground, where people did not know exactly what was happening. He also mentioned that one could feel a slight vibration.

The United States signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. Its last nuclear explosion took place in 1992. Russia and China have not conducted tests since 1990 and 1996. No country except North Korea has detonated a nuclear device in recent decades.

Pakistan is not part of the CTBT, but continues to say it will not be the first to resume testing.