The U.S. has taken “very seriously” the reports about illegal modifications made in the American-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles by Pakistan, to expand capabilities to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, even as Islamabad has agreed for “mutual inspections“.
“This is something that we take very seriously. We have raised the issue with the Pakistani Government. The (Pak) Government has responded with an agreement in principle for mutually agreed inspections,” Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley, told PTI when asked about a news report published in The New York Times.
In a news report published August 30, The New York Times, quoting unnamed American official, said the U.S. has accused Pakistan of illegal modifications in the Harpoon anti-ship missile to expand its capacity to strike land targets, a potential threat to India. Between 1985 and 1988 the Ronald Reagan administration delivered 165 Harpoon missiles to Pakistan.
“In this particular case, we have some concerns. We shared them with the Government of Pakistan. The Government of Pakistan has been responsive,” Mr. Crowley said.
“We would wait and see if those inspections can address the concerns that we have raised,” he said. The U.S. has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions. Both are violations of the U.S. law, including the Arms Control Export Act.
“I am not going to talk about specific issues, brought up in the story. We watch this closely. These are important agreements. This is not about any one country. With any country with which we exchange our defence articles, we have this kind of agreement,” Mr. Crowley said.
“When we have concerns about how those systems should be used, we raise these concerns with the appropriate governments,” he noted.
The violations by Pakistan were first noted by the American intelligence agencies on April 23, The New York Times said, when Pakistan had an unannounced suspicious missile test, that appeared to give the country a new offensive weapon. Pakistan has denied those charges.
The modified version of the missile would be a significant new entry into Pakistan’s arsenal against India as these would enable its small navy to strike targets on land in India, this complementing the sizable land-based missile arsenal that Pakistan has developed.
Since early this year, when the Obama Administration had proposed to triple the non-military aid and also increase its military assistance to Pakistan, a number of U.S. legislators have been making similar charges against Pakistan and demanding that any military aid to the country should be conditional.
The Congress is in the final stages of taking a decision on providing $7.5 billion in civilian aid to Pakistan. The latest expose has the potential to “derail” this, the daily said.
Keywords: Harpoon, missile, Pakistan, modification, U.S. Defence Department, New York Times
Comments:
This is just a PR exercise by the US and Pakisthan. Pakisthan is very important to the US designs in the region and that isn't going to change.
US DESTABILIZES PAKISTAN and ALL of SOUTH ASIA with WEAPONS and PRESENCE. That's the real story behind this news article.
Pakistan modifying weapons supplied to it, BY the US, comes as absolutely no surprise.
But the point is, should Pakistan be blamed? NO. Blame the US for its hypermilitarism to suit its own destructive ends.
Successive US govts. have played a dangerous role in South Asia, particularly by subjugating Pakistan for over 55 years, to selfish US interests, beginning with the John Foster Dulles era of the US. State Dept. Pakistan became a pawn in the US machinations against the former USSR, in the Cold War which the US invented against the Soviets. Now the US is the world's largest Centrally Planned Economy(CPE), how ironic.
The US's South Asia policy under Obama is no exception. That policy is controlled, not by the White House, but by a long established State Department/Pentagon/ CIA policy of US global dominance, control and consequent disaster, through the double deployment of weapons and capital, by the US, over certain regions at certain points in time.
For 55 plus years, South Asia has been a region in which the US has disastrously meddled. Now, with its diminished stature in the so-called Middle East, the US is trying, and to a large measure has succeeded, in accomplishing "strategic depth" in South Asia. South Asia is the loser.
The US is both an ally and a partner of hapless, dependent, ethically and economiclly bankrupt Pakistan. A weak still largely feudal but dangerously US-weaponized Pakistan is no match in this equation.
Instead of helping Pakistan's ordinary people to accomplish SOCIAL JUSTICE through food security, water security, shelter, education, healthcare, manufacturing and trade development, the US has brutally attacked ordinary Pakistanis' aspirations for a better life, by weaponizing and destroying Pakistan's already fragile sovereignty.
It suits Pakistan's feudal/military leaders to depict India as the enemy. But ordinary Pakistan know that Indians and Pakistanis are sisters and brothers whose oppressor is the US, and before them, the Brits, not to mention our own national elites in our respective countries.
Such is the aftermath of the colonial -- and now neo-imperial conundrum we South Asians face at the present time.
Only India and Pakistan can resolve their disagreements. The determined and largely successful effort of the US to become a third party strategic geopolitical player MUST fail, if South Asia's sovereign nation-states are to succeed, on behalf of their own diverse and long suffering peoples.
The US has got to go.
Chithra KarunaKaran
New York, NY
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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