US accuses Pakistan of altering defense missiles
Potential threat to India a worry; charge is denied
WASHINGTON - The United States has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, according to senior administration and congressional officials.
The charge, which set off a new outbreak of tensions between the United States and Pakistan, was made in an unpublicized diplomatic protest in late June to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and other top Pakistani officials.
The accusation comes at a particularly delicate time, when the administration is asking Congress to approve $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next five years, and when Washington is pressing a reluctant Pakistani military to focus its attentions on fighting the Taliban, rather than expanding its nuclear and conventional forces aimed at India.
While American officials say that the weapon in the latest dispute is a conventional one - based on the Harpoon antiship missiles that were sold to Pakistan by the Reagan administration as a defensive weapon in the Cold War - the subtext of the argument is growing concern about the speed with which Pakistan is developing new generations of both conventional and nuclear weapons.
“There’s a concerted effort to get these guys to slow down,’’ one senior administration official said. “Their energies are misdirected.’’
At issue is the detection by American intelligence agencies of a suspicious missile test on April 23 - a test never announced by the Pakistanis - that appeared to give the country a new offensive weapon.
American military and intelligence officials suspect that Pakistan has modified the Harpoon missiles, a move that would be a violation of the Arms Control Export Act.
Pakistan has denied the charge, saying it developed the missile itself.
The United States has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions, another violation of US law that the Obama administration has protested.
Whatever their origin, the missiles would be a significant new entry into Pakistan’s arsenal against India. They would enable Pakistan’s small navy to strike targets on land, complementing the sizable land-based missile arsenal that Pakistan has developed.
That, in turn, would be likely to spur another round of an arms race with India that the United States has been trying, unsuccessfully, to halt.
“The focus of our concern is that this is a potential unauthorized modification of a maritime antiship defensive capability to an offensive land-attack missile,’’ said another senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter involves classified information.
“The potential for proliferation and end-use violations are things we watch very closely,’’ the official added. “When we have concerns, we act aggressively.’’
A senior Pakistani official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because the interchanges with Washington have been both delicate and highly classified, said the American accusation was “incorrect.’’
The official said the missile tested was developed by Pakistan, just as it had modified North Korean designs to build a range of land-based missiles that could strike India.
He said Pakistan had taken the unusual step of agreeing to allow American officials to inspect the country’s Harpoon inventory to prove that it had not violated the law, a step that administration officials praised.
