Islamabad: Pakistan on Friday described as “ambiguous” India’s ‘no first use’ policy on nuclear weapons and said it cannot be a substitute for verifiable arms control and restraint measures, days after defence minister Manohar Parrikar questioned the doctrine. “Pakistan believes the ambiguous ‘no first use’ declaration is not verifiable and amounts to nothing. It can’t be a substitute for verifiable arms control and restraint measures proposed by Pakistan’s standing offer of strategic restraint regime,” foreign office (FO) spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said in his weekly briefing. “There is also growing recognition of the fact that 2008 exemption to India neither benefited non-proliferation regime nor objective of strategic stability in South Asia,” he said. He said Pakistan has expressed its openness to measures for strengthening non-proliferation objectives to the NSG, which included proposal for binding bilateral agreement with India on non-testing.

Source: Mint November 18, 2016 15:35 UTC