At Shangri-La Dialogue, Hegseth Steps Back From US Intelligence Warning on Pakistan Missile Programme |
Listen to this article:
New Delhi: US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Saturday, May 30, declined to characterise either India or Pakistan as a missile threat to the United States, despite a US intelligence community assessment presented to Congress in March that had named Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile programme as a potential threat to the American homeland.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Hegseth said Washington was “not pointing a finger” at either country, and he said both had played a role in regional peace.
His remarks came in response to a question that explicitly invoked Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 18, in which she had named Pakistan alongside Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as countries developing missile systems that “put our homeland within range”.
A Pakistani delegate had posed a question to Hegseth about how he assessed India’s long-range missile capability, “particularly in terms of the recent test of Agni-6 ICBM with a range of approximately 12,000 kilometres” that she claimed could place parts of Europe and America within reach. Her question opened by noting that Gabbard had identified Pakistan’s potential ICBM capability as a future threat to........