The United States on Tuesday said it 'discourages' Pakistan from using for military purposes the new powerful nuclear reactor it was reportedly building, while acknowledging that it had known about the plans regarding the Khushab plant 'for some time.'
"We have known of these plans for some time. Pakistan is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty; nor is India. But on the other hand, we discourage military use of the facility," White House Spokesman Tony Snow told reporters in Washington.
He was responding to a report in The Washington Post that Pakistan was constructing a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium at its Khushab nuclear plant. Snow said the US supports the fissile material cutoff treaty that has currently been introduced and discourages expansion and modernisation of nuclear programmes of both India and Pakistan.
"We continue to discourage the expansion and modernisation of nuclear weapons programmes, both of India and Pakistan. We also support a fissile material cut-off treaty that we have introduced to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament," he said.
"We are continuing to observe a voluntary production moratorium in all the states that produce fissile material, as we have in the United States for a very long time," he added.
