June 19, 2002	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1423

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NEW DELHI, June 18: India on Tuesday denounced President Musharraf’s comment that Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent has made India stand down, accusing him of “nuclear blackmail”.

Musharraf said at a dinner for scientists and engineers in Islamabad on Monday night that Pakistan’s N-arsenal had brought strategic balance to S. Asia and had prevented India from starting a “so-called limited war”.

Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said the world take note of President Musharraf’s remarks.

“The international community should not ignore such continued manifestations of Pakistani irresponsibility, loose talk and undiluted hostility towards India and the continued concoction of doomsday theory to justify Pakistan’s use of nuclear blackmail,” she said.

President Musharraf had said at the dinner that Pakistan was “compelled to show them (India) in May 1998 that we were not bluffing, and in May 2002 again we were compelled to show that we do not bluff.

“By testing with outstanding success the delivery systems of our strategic capability, these men validated the reliability, accuracy and the deterrence value of Pakistan’s premier surface-to-surface ballistic missile systems of the Hatf series, namely Ghauri, Ghaznavi and Abdali.” —AFP