Search the Internet          Tips

Pakistan will not reply to Agni test now: Sattar

K J M Varma in Islamabad

Pakistan will not be provoked into responding to India's Agni missile test with one of its own since that would "add tension to tension", Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar told CNN's Q&A programme on Friday.

By doing so, he said, "we will fall into the Indian way of dealing with the situation that is adding provocation, adding to the threat on the border, adding tension to tension. We will wait for the return of a degree of normalcy and if at that time it is necessary we will carry out a test."

He said the Agni test "is bound to be considered unwise, if not reckless, at a time that is very tense".

When told that India had given adequate notice of the test to Pakistan and other states, he said that did not minimise its importance or the threat implicit in it. "Had wisdom prevailed, India could have and should have done what we did," he said.

Pakistan, he claimed, deferred the testing of its Shaheen missile on account of its "provocative implication".

Commenting on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's statement that the test was for India's protection, Sattar argued that at this moment all major states are exercising restraint.

Some Pakistani media reports, however, said the country could not respond with its own tit-for-tat test because of the presence of American forces on its soil.

Moving any missiles at this stage could expose their location, the Pakistan Observer newspaper said.

As news of the Agni test reached Islamabad, President Pervez Musharraf held talks with his national security advisers, officials of the command and control authority of Pakistan's strategic weapons, and his adviser Abdul Qadeer Khan, retired head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, it said.

To a question on CNN on the allegation of continued infiltration by terrorists from Pakistan, Sattar said Pakistan had suggested to India and to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan that a "verification mechanism" be established.

"If India is sure of its facts, it should not hesitate to submit its allegations to verification of the UN military observers in Kashmir," he said.

PTI

RELATED REPORT:
Muted response from China to Agni missile test

Tell us what you think of this report