Ghauri missile can hit India in minutes: Pak

Pakistani defence has now been made `impregnable’ and Islamabad was afraid of neither India nor Israel, Mubarakmand was quoted by the media as saying at a function here.

Incidentally, his comments came only a day after chief architect of Pakistan’s nuclear programme Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan said that the range of Pakistan’s nuclear capable `Ghauri’ missile was being extended upto 1700 to 1750 kms and that itcan now hit far-flung Indian cities like Calcutta and Chennai.

Khan also said that serial production of Ghauri had begun and Islamabad had now acquired a stockpile of these missiles. Mubarakmand also said that his country was soon going to hear good news about a new missile named `Shaheen’, though he did not elaborate about its range and capability.

Earlier reports had said that Pakistani scientists were working on another medium-range missile with a range of upto 500 kms which can carry nuclear warheads and test-firing of this missile would be conducted very soon.

“Shaheen’ missile will further reinforce the country’s defence which is already impregnable,” mubarakmand said. He agreed with Khan’s view that Pakistan’s signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would not harm its nuclear programme, but added that “CTBT will restrict further nuclear tests and now politicians have to decide that, what the country had achieved in the field was enough or not.”

Incidentally, serious differencesbetween PAEC and Khan’s Kahuta research laboratory (KRL) had surfaced immediately after Pakistan’s May nuclear explosions as both claimed the credit for the nuclear tests.

There were a series of statements to the media against each other by both Khan and Mubarakmand in the wake of the nuclear tests which ended only after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif intervened.