WASHINGTON: A senior White House official on Thursday said nuclear-armed Pakistan is developing long-range ballistic missile capabilities that eventually could allow it to strike targets well beyond South Asia, making it an “emerging threat” to the United States.
Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer’s surprise revelation underscored how far the once-close ties between Washington and Islamabad have deteriorated since the 2021 US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It also raised questions about whether Pakistan has shifted the objectives of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs long intended to counter those of India, with which it has fought three major wars since 1947.
Speaking to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Finer said Pakistan has pursued “increasingly sophisticated missile technology, from long-range ballistic missile systems to equipment, that would enable the testing of significantly larger rocket motors.”
If those trends continue, Finer said, “Pakistan will have the capability to strike targets well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.”
The number of nuclear-armed states with missiles that can reach the US homeland “is very small and they tend to be adversarial,” he continued, naming Russia, North Korea and China.
“So, candidly, it’s hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States,” Finer said.
His speech came a day after Washington announced a new round of sanctions related to Pakistan’s ballistic missile development program, including for the first time against the state-run defense agency that oversees the program.
The Pakistani embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Islamabad casts its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs as deterrents against Indian aggression and intended to maintain regional stability.
Two senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the US concerns with Pakistan’s missile program have been long-standing and stemmed from the sizes of the rocket engines being developed.
The threat posed to the United States is up to a decade away, said one official.
Finer’s comments, the officials said, were intended to press Pakistani officials to address why they are developing more powerful rocket engines, something they have refused to do.
“They don’t acknowledge our concerns. They tell us we are biased,” said the second US official, adding that Pakistani officials have wrongly implied that US sanctions on their missile program are intended “to handicap their ability to defend against India.”
Finer included himself among senior US officials who he said repeatedly have raised concerns about the missile program with top Pakistani officials to no avail.
Washington and Islamabad, he noted, had been “long-time partners” on development, counter-terrorism and security.
“That makes us question even more why Pakistan will be motivated to develop a capability that could be used against us.”
Pakistan has been critical of warm ties US President Joe Biden has forged with its long-time foe India, and maintains close ties with China. Some Chinese entities have been slapped with US sanctions for supplying Islamabad’s ballistic missile program.
It conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 1998 — more than 20 years after India’s first test blast — and has built an extensive arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of lofting nuclear warheads.
The Bulletin of the American Scientists research organization estimates that Pakistan has a stockpile of about 170 warheads.
US-Pakistani relations have undergone major ups and downs, including close Cold War ties that saw them support Afghan rebels against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Pakistan also was a key partner in the US fight against Al-Qaeda following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and has been a major non-NATO ally since 2004.
But ties also have been hurt by coups staged by the Pakistani military, its support for the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule and its nuclear weapons program.
Several experts said Finer’s speech came as a major surprise.
“For a senior US official to publicly link concerns about proliferation in Pakistan to a future direct threat to the US homeland — this is a mighty dramatic development,” said Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center think tank.
Pakistan’s missile program is ‘emerging threat’, top US official says
https://arab.news/v9c72
Pakistan’s missile program is ‘emerging threat’, top US official says
- Pakistan developing long-range missiles that could threaten United States, senior US official says
- Pakistan refuses to address why it is developing more powerful rocket engines, senior officials say
- US has imposed new sanctions on Pakistan’s missile program
Russia begins building road bridge to North Korea, PM says
- The new road bridge, which has been under discussion for years, will be 850 meters (2789 ft) and link up with the Russian highway system
The bridge is being built near the existing “Friendship Bridge,” a rail bridge which was commissioned in 1959 after the Korean war.
At a ceremony dedicated to the start of the new bridge’s construction, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said it was a significant event in Russian-North Korean relations, the TASS state news agency reported.
“The significance goes far beyond just an engineering task,” Mishustin was quoted as saying. “It symbolizes our common desire to strengthen friendly, good-neighborly relations and increase inter-regional cooperation.”
The new road bridge, which has been under discussion for years, will be 850 meters (2789 ft) and link up with the Russian highway system. Its construction was agreed during a visit by President Vladimir Putin to North Korea in 2024.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper said the bridge will be ready by the summer of 2026.
Mishustin said the bridge “will allow entrepreneurs to significantly increase transportation volumes and reduce transportation costs, ensure reliable and stable supplies of various products, which will contribute to the expansion of trade and economic cooperation,” TASS reported.
About 600 North Korean troops have been killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine out of a total deployment of 15,000, South Korean lawmakers said on Wednesday, citing the country’s intelligence agency.
Australian triple-murder suspect allegedly cooked ‘special’ mushroom meal
- ‘Special meal’ for her in-laws was Beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms
- Within hours of the lunch, the four guests developed diarrhea and vomiting
MORWELL, Australia: An Australian woman promised a “special meal” for her in-laws before dishing up a beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms that killed three of them, jurors heard Wednesday.
On the opening day of a trial that has drawn global attention, Erin Patterson, 50, faced a jury accused of three murders – including her parents-in-law – and one attempted murder.
She has pleaded not guilty to all counts, with her defense saying it was all “a terrible accident.”
Patterson “deliberately poisoned” her guests, Crown Prosecutor Nanette Rogers told the jury.
The accused served “individual beef Wellingtons, mashed potatoes and green beans,” with the guests eating from four large grey dinner plates, while she ate from a smaller, orange plate, Rogers said.
Patterson invited her guests to the lunch in late July 2023 at her home in the sedate Victoria state farm village of Leongatha, telling them she had a health issue to relate, the prosecutor said.
Her estranged husband Simon Patterson declined, texting her the night before that he felt “uncomfortable” going.
In a return text minutes later, Patterson said she was “disappointed,” as she wanted to prepare a “special meal and that she may not be able to have a lunch like this for some time,” Rogers said.
But her husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, decided to go, along with his aunt Heather Wilkinson and her husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson.
During the lunch, Patterson claimed to have cancer and wanted their advice about how to tell her two children, the prosecutor said.
Medical tests later found no evidence she had cancer, Rogers said.
Within hours of the lunch, the four guests developed diarrhea and vomiting, and were raced to hospital.
All were diagnosed by treating doctors with poisoning by death cap mushrooms, Rogers told the court.
Within days, Don, Gail and Heather were dead.
Ian, the pastor, survived after nearly two months in hospital.
Patterson went to the hospital two days after the lunch and complained she, too, was unwell, the prosecution said.
She initially refused medical assistance and left the hospital, but relented and returned for treatment, the court heard.
Patterson said her children had eaten leftovers of the beef Wellington.
But she claimed to have scraped off the mushroom paste and pastry because they were “fussy,” Rogers said.
When medical staff demanded to see her children, Patterson resisted saying she did not want them to “be panicked and stressed.”
“She did not appear to be concerned about children’s health but rather about stressing them out,” Rogers said.
The children eventually received medical attention but did not have any symptoms of poisoning.
Rogers said Patterson knew that neither she nor her children had consumed the deadly mushrooms.
Police located beef Wellington remnants at Patterson’s home, which were found under forensic investigation to have traces of death cap mushrooms, Rogers added.
Patterson allegedly told doctors she used fresh mushrooms from a supermarket and also dried mushrooms from an Asian grocery – but she did not remember which one.
A Department of Health investigation was unable to trace any shop selling death cap mushrooms.
Patterson discarded a food dehydrator in the days after the lunch, which was later found to contain traces of death cap mushrooms, prosecutors said.
Patterson’s lawyer Colin Mandy said the poisoning was a “tragedy and terrible accident.”
“She didn’t do it deliberately, she didn’t do it intentionally. The defense case is that she didn’t intend to cause anyone any harm on that day,” he said.
Patterson is being tried in the Latrobe Valley Law Courts in Morwell, south of Melbourne.
The trial is expected to last about six weeks.
Russians fighting more intensely despite ceasefire talk, Ukraine commander says
DUBAI: Russian forces have significantly increased the intensity of their combat activity, Ukraine's top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Wednesday.
"Despite loud statements about readiness to cease fire for the May holidays, the occupiers have significantly increased the intensity of combat actions, focusing their main efforts on the Pokrovsk direction," Syrskyi said on Telegram after working with brigades holding Ukraine's defence in the area.
France says Bessent receptive to idea of zero reciprocal tariffs
PARIS: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is receptive to the idea of zero reciprocal tariffs between France and the United States, French finance minister Eric Lombard said, as France and the European Union continue tariff talks with the US
“He told me that this was not out of reach,” Lombard told Sud Radio on Wednesday as he summarised talks he had held with Bessent.
“We want to get back to zero tariffs. Our American partners have been softening their position,” he added.
Greece’s dark past is uncovered after 33 bodies are found in a civil war-era mass grave
- War-era battles between Western-backed government forces and left-wing insurgents, a brutal conflict with assassination squads, child abductions and mass displacements
- Descendants have been coming to the site in recent weeks, leaving flowers and asking authorities to conduct DNA testing
THESSALONIKI: Workers were installing benches at a park in the ancient Greek port city of Thessaloniki when their excavator pushed brown soil off a fragile white skull.
They turned off the motorized equipment and set to work with pickaxes and shovels. The crew found two skeletons, then more. By March, 33 sets of bones lay in a tight cluster of unmarked burial pits in the shadow of a Byzantine fortress.
“We found many bullets in the heads, the skulls,” supervising engineer Haris Charismiadis said, standing on earth overturned by four months of digging.
It’s common to find ancient remains or objects in Greece. But hulking Yedi Kule castle was a prison where Communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece’s 1946–49 Civil War. Tens of thousands died in the early Cold War-era battles between Western-backed government forces and left-wing insurgents, a brutal conflict with assassination squads, child abductions and mass displacements.
Greece’s archaeological service cleared the site for development because the bones are less than 100 years old. But authorities in Neapolis-Sykies, a suburb of the coastal city of Thessaloniki, pressed on with excavation, saying the chance find has “great historical and national importance.”
Descendants have been coming to the site in recent weeks, leaving flowers and asking authorities to conduct DNA testing “so they can retrieve the remains of their grandfather, great-grandfather or uncle,” said Simos Daniilidis, who has served as Neapolis-Sykies’ mayor since 1994.
As many as 400 Yedi Kule prisoners were executed, according to historians and the Greek Communist Party. Items found with the bodies — a woman’s shoe, a handbag, a ring — offer glimpses into the lives cut short.
Wartime legacy
For the families of slain pro-Communist Greeks, the find in the Park of National Resistance is reviving a wartime legacy kept dormant to avoid reigniting old animosities. The small site has become Greece’s first Civil War mass grave to be exhumed.
Government forces executed 19-year-old Agapios Sachinis after he refused to sign a declaration renouncing his political beliefs.
“These are not simple matters,” his namesake nephew said during a recent visit to the site.
“It’s about carrying inside you not just courage, but values and dignity you won’t compromise — not even to save your own life,” said Agapios Sachinis, 78.
A retired Communist city council member, Sachinis was imprisoned in the 1960s for his political activity during the dictatorship. Today, Greece’s Communist Party belongs to the political mainstream, largely thanks to its role in the country’s WWII resistance.
If Sachinis’ uncle’s remains are identified, he said, he will cremate them and keep the ashes at his home.
“I want Agapios close to me, at least while I’m alive,” he said.
Cold War playbook
Greece’s Civil War began in the wake of World War II. Coming after continent-wide destruction, it quickly lost international attention but the conflict marked a turning point: US President Harry Truman’s policy of anti-communist intervention — the Truman Doctrine — was presented to Congress in 1947 as a means to direct funds and military support to Greece.
Etched on the newly excavated bones in Thessaloniki, then, is a playbook that went on to produce decades of repression, societal divisions and more unmarked graves in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Governments later addressing the Cold War-era abuses and atrocities faced a painful choice: To unearth the past — as attempted with investigative commissions in Eastern Europe and many Latin American countries — or suppress it for fear of fresh division.
Greek emergency laws were gradually lifted and only fully abolished in 1989. Records of summary trials and executions were never made public. No political force pushed for the excavation of suspected burial sites.
Politicians still use highly cautious language when addressing the past and the Thessaloniki discovery was met with a subdued public reaction. The find has not been directly addressed by the country’s center-right government – a reminder that many Greeks still find it easier to walk past the country’s ghosts than confront them.
Decades ago, the neighborhood park in Thessaloniki — a densely populated port city of a million with ruins from the ancient Greek, Roman and Ottoman eras, with historically strong Balkan and Jewish influences — was a field on the outskirts of the city. Today, it’s frequented by retirees and ringed by apartment buildings filled with middle-class families. During construction, residents whispered that bones had been discovered when foundations were laid, but no inquiry was conducted.
‘Flowers of their generation’
Executions by army firing squads extended into the 1950s and were publicly announced, but graves were unmarked and secret. Author and historian Spyros Kouzinopoulos, a Thessaloniki native, spent decades researching the executions at Yedi Kule, including the indignities endured by prisoners in their final hours.
After a military tribunal issued a death sentence, the chief guard would take the condemned prisoner to solitary confinement in tiny cells barely big enough to stand. Many would use their last hours to write letters to their families. At dawn, the chief guard and two others would retrieve the prisoner and hand them over to the firing squad. Most were loaded onto trucks to avoid attracting public attention. Sometimes they were led to their death on foot.
Most of the victims were barely adults — youth Kouzinopoulos called “flowers of their generation.”
Two 17-year-old schoolgirls, Efpraxia Nikolaidou and Eva Kourouzidou, were executed while wearing their uniforms, he said.
“It shook me to the core,” Kouzinopoulos said.
DNA testing
City officials are taking steps to conduct DNA testing on the remains, and urging families of the missing to submit genetic material. That way, the bodies can be identified and returned to relatives.
Agapios Sachinis, the septuagenarian whose uncle was executed, is among those eager to provide DNA.
Mayor Daniilidis has ordered an expansion of the dig to other parts of the park in coming weeks.
“We must send a message,” he said. “Never again.”
