A senior White House official claimed on Thursday that Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is advancing its long-range ballistic missile program, which might doubtlessly allow it to achieve targets past South Asia, together with the United States.
Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer mentioned Islamabad’s conduct raised “real questions” about its intentions.
“Candidly, it’s hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States,” Finer mentioned in a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Meanwhile, Pakistan denounced the brand new U.S. sanctions on the nation’s ballistic missile program as “discriminatory” that put the area’s peace and safety in danger.
Pakistan’s international ministry warned in a press release that the sanctions “have dangerous implications for strategic stability of our region and beyond.” It additionally solid doubt on U.S. allegations that focused companies have been concerned in weapons proliferation as a result of earlier sanctions “were based on mere doubts and suspicion without any evidence whatsoever.”
It additionally accused the U.S. of “double standards” for waiving licensing necessities for superior army know-how to different nations.
The sanctions freeze any U.S. property belonging to the focused companies and bar Americans from doing business with them.
The U.S. State Department mentioned one such sanctioned entity, the Islamabad-based National Development Complex, labored to accumulate objects for creating Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile program together with the SHAHEEN sequence of ballistic missiles.
The different sanctioned entities are Akhtar and Sons Private Limited, Affiliates International and Rockside Enterprise.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller mentioned Wednesday on X that the U.S. had “been clear and consistent about our concerns” over such weapons proliferation and that it might “continue to engage constructively with Pakistan on these issues.”
The sanctions have been additionally opposed by the occasion of Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Zulfiqar Bukhari, Khan’s spokesman, took to the social platform X to criticize the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, saying “We strongly oppose U.S. sanctions on the National Development Complex and three commercial entities.”
The newest U.S. sanctions got here months after comparable measures have been slapped on different international entities, together with a Chinese analysis institute after the U.S. State Department accused them of working for the National Development Complex, which it says was concerned within the improvement and manufacturing of Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missiles.
Analysts say Pakistan’s nuclear and missile program is primarily aimed toward countering threats from neighboring India.
Security professional Syed Muhammad Ali known as the sanctions “short-sighted, destabilizing and divorced from South Asian regional strategic realities.”
Pakistan grew to become a declared nuclear energy in 1998, when it performed underground nuclear checks in response to these carried out by its rival and neighbor India. The two sides frequently test-fired their brief, medium and long-range missiles.
Source: www.dailysabah.com