Pak will match India’s arms spree: Musharraf

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf vowed on Friday that Pakistan would match what he called a huge arms build-up by rival and fellow nuclea...

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf vowed on Friday that Pakistan would match what he called a huge arms build-up by rival and fellow nuclear power India that had upset the balance of forces in South Asia.

Musharraf, wrapping up a three-day visit to South Korea, said that peace with India was maintained by keeping a balance of forces.

‘‘This balance of forces was tilted — and imbalance created — when India went for the nuclear and missile forces, and similar imbalance is being created now through massive acquisition of arms by our adversary, India,’’ he said without elaborating.

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‘‘We will respond to this imbalance, we will rectify this imbalance in the future through all means possible,’’ said the Army General.

Musharraf said it was the threat from India that had driven Pakistan to conduct its first nuclear tests in 1998. He said Islamabad had never proliferated nuclear technology to Seoul’s communist neighbour although it had bought North Korean missiles.

He said reported visits to North Korea by nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, revered by many in Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, were connected to purchases of conventional short-range missiles.

He said Pakistan now had no arms collaboration with North Korea. (Reuters)

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Learn democracy from India: Bush
Pak absent in US list of democracies

WASHINGTON: Urging all the non-democratic countries of the world to embrace the rule of the people, US President George W. Bush on Thursday cited the example of India to reject the argument that some nations are not fit for it. ‘‘Seventy four years ago, the Sunday Times declared nine-tenths of the population of India to be ‘illiterates not caring a fig for politics’. Yet when Indian democracy was imperiled in the 1970s, the people showed their commitment to liberty in a national referendum that saved their form of government,’’ Bush said on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy at the US Chamber of Commerce.

The US President George Bush did not list Pakistan as one of the countries following democratic norms. He said in an obvious reference to countries like Pakistan that despotism was a barrier to democracy in half of the Muslim world, while the other was following policies consistent ‘‘with democratic, self-government rule’’. (Agencies)