- SEOUL (Reuters) - President
Pervez Musharraf vowed 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.
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- Musharraf, wrapping up a three-day state visit to South
Korea, also restated his earlier denials that Pakistan had traded its nuclear
weapons expertise for North Korean missile technology. The communist North
says it has atomic capability.
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- Musharraf told a news conference that peace with his
giant neighbor India was maintained by keeping a balance of forces.
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- "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, who took power in a bloodless 1999 coup.
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- 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 neighbor
although it had bought North Korean missiles.
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- 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.
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- "We have purchased these missiles from North Korea.
We have also had a transfer of technology of these missiles. We now manufacture
ourselves these missiles in the same organization that Dr. A.Q. Khan headed,"
he said.
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- "Therefore, I don't know how many times he has visited,
but maybe his interaction was in this respect," Musharraf said. He
said Pakistan now had no arms collaboration with North Korea.
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- Some media reports say Khan made a dozen trips to North
Korea. A Pakistani firm Khan once headed was slapped with U.S. sanctions
last March, after Washington accused it of transferring nuclear-capable
missiles from North Korea to Pakistan.
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- Musharraf, who held talks with South Korean President
Roh Moo-hyun Thursday, said Islamabad and Seoul had signed agreements for
cooperation in the oil and gas sector and in the information technology
sector. He gave no figures.
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- Musharraf flew to Seoul from China, where he agreed a
$500 million loan and won commitments to boost trade but did not sign an
expected deal on nuclear power plant cooperation.
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