China Building Missile Factory In Pakistan

China has not only supplied missiles and missile components to Pakistan but helped Islamabad build a missile factory, Time magazine quoting cia reports said.

The magazine said, CIA satellites in 1995 spotted a curious-looking facility under construction near Rawalpindi.

It had long, narrow buildings with doorways large enough to roll out a rocket the size of the 30-ft. M-11 as well as a test stand nearby, where the solid fuel engine could be mounted and fired up.

It said for five years the cia has been carefully tracking the flow of Chinese M-11 missile components into Pakistan.

The CIA in its report which it termed first class piece of spying said not only was China selling missiles to Pakistan but it was also helping it building a factory to manufacture ballistic missiles.

 

The confirmation of the report could endanger the US administrations policy of extending the most favoured nation (MFN) status to China which is to be discussed this week in US congress.

Time said Pakistan is also working to build nuclear warheads small enough to fit atop the M-11 missiles.

The White House and the state department, however, have treated the report like a barrel of radioactive waste, refusing to schedule inter-agency meetings during the past seven months, even to discuss whether China should be penalized, the magazine said.

Time magazine quoting CIA reports said spy satellite photos showed that the layout of the plant in the Rawalpindi suburbs was similar to an M-11 rocket facility in Hubei province in China.

CIA agents on the ground showed that about a dozen engineers from the china precision machinery import-export corporation visited the Rawalpindi site, the magazine said.

The state-rim corporation, based in Beijing, is in charge of marketing missiles like the M-11 overseas.

The CIA also spotted crates containing what it believed were machine tools for building rocket motors being shipped by the Chinese corporation to the plant in Pakistan, it said.

Last summer ,CIA concluded that China had delivered to Pakistan not just missile parts but more than 30 ready-to-launch M-11 missiles that are stored in canisters at the Sargodha airforce base in Pakistan.

Under US Laws, a presidential finding that China has supplied fully assembled missiles and helped Pakistan build the plant could trigger tough sanctions that might halt billions of dollars worth of Sino-American electronics and aerospace trade.

Last October, the CIA and US Intelligence agencies had agreed on a statement of fact, a top secret document that said China was helping Pakistan build the Rawalpindi plant and warned the facility could be producing key parts of the rocket within two years.

Both the Bush and Clinton administrations slapped trade sanctions on China in 1991 and 1993 for selling M-11 components to Pakistan. The penalties were lifted in 1994, after Beijing promised to abide by an international agreement prohibiting countries from selling rockets with the range of the M-11 that could be fitted with a nuclear warhead.