Pakistan Poses No Threat Despite Growing Nuclear Arsenal - Official

Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state, an Islamabad official told The Financial Times, commenting on reports that Pakistan could be set become the world's third-largest nuclear power within a decade.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The report entitled, 'A Normal Nuclear Pakistan,' published by the US think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Thursday, predicts that if Pakistan continues to grow its nuclear arsenal at the current pace, it will take just ten years for the country to become the world's third-largest nuclear power, after the United States and Russia.

The "projections [in the report] for the future are highly exaggerated. Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state, not a reckless one," The Financial Times quoted a senior Pakistani government official as saying.

The newspaper also quoted Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani security commentator, as saying that Islamabad's nuclear program was conceived to deter New Delhi, implying that the rate of its expansion is inextricably linked to India's program.

Currently, Pakistani has the sixth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, behind the United States, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom.

Pakistan joined the club of nuclear powers in 1998, a few weeks after India, Islamabad's main regional rival, after successfully completing its own nuclear weapons tests. Both countries did not accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.