Pakistan fires 'test' missile
2004-03-09 10:38
Islamabad - Pakistan on Tuesday tested its longest-range missile yet, according to the military.
The missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting targets deep inside neighbouring India.
"Pakistan today successfully carried out the maiden test fire of the Shaheen 2 surface-to-surface ballistic missile," a military statement said, without giving details on where the test was conducted.
Tests in the past have been conducted in remote Baluchistan or into the Arabian Sea, or from a missile facility at Jhelum, 100km southeast of the capital, Islamabad.
The missile "can carry all types of warheads up to 2 000 kilometres," the military said.
Advance
Neighboring countries - including archrival India - had been informed in advance "as a confidence-building measure", the statement said. Both countries routinely conduct such missile tests, but also have used them in the past to send political messages or ratchet up tension.
Such a message was not likely to be hidden in Tuesday's test, which came amid peace moves in recent months between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals. Pakistan's government has said for weeks that it was planning the test, though it had not announced an exact date.
India and Pakistan last month set themselves a roadmap to peace that will include negotiations to solve their dispute over divided Kashmir - the issue at the heart of their five decades of hostility.
- AP