China helping Pak with ICBM: US Congressman

Washington, Apr 29: A top US lawmaker has alleged that China was helping Pakistan with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and claimed that it was also engaged in bullying its neighbours in Asia. "They (China) are thieves.

They steal our intellectual property. Cyber attacks, I believe they're responsible for those, they're bullying Asia, trying to make new sovereign territory in the South China Sea and then claim the area around it," Congressman Ted Poe alleged during a Congressional hearing on Asia yesterday.

"They're helping Pakistan with ICBMs, and then you get to human rights, they're the worst offender I think in the world," he alleged.

"They persecute Christians and other religious minorities, and then they have this practice of putting people they don't like, like the Falun Gong, in prison and charging them with trumped-up political crimes and then harvesting their body organs and sell those on the marketplace," he said.

"That's probably the worst type of crime in the world, in my opinion," Poe said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Challenges and Opportunities in Asia.

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the committee but did not respond to the allegation of Poe that China is helping Pakistan with intercontinental ballistic missile.

Earlier this week Poe and Congressman Mike Rogers in a letter to US Secretary of State, John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sought more information on report that China has enabled a Pakistani nuclear missile capability.

Rogers is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Ted Poe is Chairman of Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-proliferation and Trade.

In their letter Rogers and Poe referred to a recent research by well know Chinese military technology expert Richard Fisher who has noted the design similarities between the Shaheen III TEL (transporter erector launcher), the Sanjiang Special Vehicle Corporation of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) WS51200 TEL, and a Chinese provided TEL North Korea's new KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

This led Fisher to conclude, "CASIC has again enabled a Pakistani nuclear missile capability," the two lawmakers wrote in their letter to Kerry, Carter and Clapper. "We are deeply concerned that the TEL displayed in Pakistan was acquired from China," Rogers and Poe said in the two-page letter.

PTI