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Pakistan warns U.S. against Patriot sale to India
Pakistan warned on Wednesday that any move by the United States to sell the Patriot anti-missile system to India would trigger a new arms race between South Asia's nuclear rivals. A team of officials from the U.S. Defence Security Cooperation Agency made a technical presentation of the Patriot system to Indian defence and foreign ministry officials earlier this week, Indian media reported. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said any plans to sell Patriots to India would be "counter-productive". "This would erode deterrance...this would send (the) entire region into a crisis mode," he told a weekly news briefing. "You will have an arms race, an unintended arms race here which nobody wants and finally it would induce higher risk-taking," he said. "This we think is not in sync with goals of peace and security that we have in this region." Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, who came to the brink of a fourth war in 2002, have continued to focus on building military capability despite a peace process launched last year. Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in a global war on terrorism, earlier this month discussed its defence needs with U.S. officials. The Pentagon notified the U.S. Congress in November of three proposed arms sales to Pakistan worth $1.2 billion, including eight P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft that Islamabad says would be used in the hunt for Islamic militants on its border with Afghanistan.
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