05 July 2004	Monday	16 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, July 4: Foreign Office Spokesman Masood Khan has said that Pakistan is not in a missile race and 'it conducts tests to validate its missile' parameters'.

According to statistics, Pakistan and India have conducted more than 40 missile tests since April 1999. Asked if there was a missile race in the region, Masood Khan told Dawn: "As far as Pakistan is concerned, there is no missile race. We conduct tests from time to time to validate our missiles' parameters."

However, he said that in a general sense there should be a nuclear restraint regime, instead of an arms race in South Asia. The short-range variant of nuclear capable surface-to-surface Agni missile tested by India from a site off the Orissa coast came just three days after President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan would conduct a 'new missile test' in next two months.

Director-general of the Inter Services Public Relations Directorate (ISPR), Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan, declined to say anything when asked if India's test was a response to President Musharraf's statement.

However, he said Pakistan did not have any plans for tit-for-tat missile tests in relation to India. He denied that Pakistan was in an arms race with any country, saying that it carried out tests only to check technical parameters.

Maj-Gen Sultan said he could not go into details of the kind of test Pakistan would conduct in two months' time as stated by President Musharraf.

Pakistan successfully test-fired a nuclear capable Hatf V ballistic missile with a range of 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) in June and notified India prior to the tests under an informal agreement on missile and nuclear CBMs.

In the two rounds of talks held between officials of Pakistan and India during June, both sides agreed to set up a hotline at foreign secretaries level to prevent nuclear confrontation, to continue a ban on nuclear tests and concluded a formal agreement on informing each other in advance about impending missile tests.

Defence sources said that prior to the formal agreement between India and Pakistan on notification to each other about missile tests as part of the confidence building measures (CBMs), India did not inform Pakistan about 14 missile tests it conducted from April 1999 to December 2003. However, it informed Pakistan under an informal agreement about seven tests from April 1999 to December 2003.

Officials in the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) of the Joint Staff Headquarters have claimed that Pakistan informed India about 14 missile tests it conducted from April 1999 to December 2003.

Asked if India had notified Pakistan about a short-range variant of the nuclear capable Agni missile it tested on Sunday, the foreign office spokesman replied in affirmative. "Yes, India gave a notification to the foreign office."