By KUNA,
Islamabad : Pakistan expressed on Thursday concerns over reports that India is again preparing for a new nuclear test amid revelations that India’s hydrogen bomb of May 1998 was a dud.
Addressing a press conference here the Foreign Office Spokesman, Abdul Basit, said that there were reports that India has a new nuclear test in the works and termed them as rather embarrassing to Pakistan.
He said that Pakistan is however steadfast on its policy of maintaining minimum defence deterrence and does not want arms race in the region.
The reports of new nuclear test by India have come amid new controversy that the May 1998 nuclear explosion of New Delhi was not the fantastic success it was claimed to be.
Pervez Hoobhoy, a leading Pakistani scientist and analyst, in his opinion published in Dawn newspaper said that the revelation of Indian nuclear scientists have turned the suspicion into a confirmed fact. However, he opined that the truth has been revealed after eleven years could be an attempt by Indian nuclear scientists to make the case for more nuclear tests.
“This would enable India to develop a full-scale thermonuclear arsenal,” he said, adding, a thermonuclear (or hydrogen) bomb is far more complex than the relatively simple fission weapon first tested by India in 1974 and by Pakistan in 1998.