ISLAMABAD, Aug 12: Pakistan on Tuesday deplored the United States announcement that it had no objection to the Israeli transfer of the Phalcon Airborne Early Warning System (AEWS) to India.

The Foreign Office on Tuesday said that the sale would adversely affect the delicate strategic balance in South Asia.

The spokesman said that Pakistan believed that the efforts should be rather directed towards restoring conventional balance between Pakistan and India.

This was the key to ensuring peace and security in the region as well as to peaceful resolution of differences between the two countries, he said.

“This US decision would only enhance India’s arrogance and its intransigence in refusing to resolve differences and stimulate tension in the region.”

Introduction of new sophisticated systems in South Asia at this juncture would destabilize the existing strategic balance with far reaching security implications for the region.

The spokesman questioned the State Department spokesman’s reasoning that in the past the US had expressed concern at the transfer of AWES to India when tension between India and Pakistan had, but after the recent developments in the governments “the US has no objections to that transfer.”

“There appear to be inadequate understanding of the situation in the region,” the spokesman said.

To help the recent engagement process between Pakistan and India, the US should not have dropped its objections to the sale, the spokesman said.

By giving a green signal to the sale, the US appeared to be undermining its own efforts to ease tensions in the region and to promote a peace process, the spokesman observed.

He said Pakistan believed that this development was contrary to the avowed US objectives of ensuring durable peace and ability in South Asia.

The spokesman expressed the hope that the US would not inadvertently encourage an open-ended arms race between India and Pakistan.