US President Donald Trump has claimed that Pakistan is among several countries actively testing nuclear weapons, asserting that this justifies his administration’s decision to resume America’s own nuclear testing after more than 30 years.In an interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday, Trump said that Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan were all conducting tests while the United States had refrained from doing so.
“Russia’s testing and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it. We’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it because otherwise you people are going to report. They don’t have reporters that are going to be writing about it,” he said.“We’re going to test because they test and others test. And certainly North Korea’s been testing. Pakistan’s been testing,” Trump added.When questioned about his decision to resume nuclear detonations, Trump argued that such testing was necessary to ensure the reliability of US weapons systems, citing recent trials of advanced nuclear-capable systems by Russia.“You have to see how they work… We’re the only country that doesn’t test. And I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test,” he said.Confusion surrounded Trump’s announcement, first made on social media minutes before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea. The last US nuclear explosion occurred in 1992. While no country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a detonation for decades, Trump maintained that “they test way underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening.”US energy secretary Chris Wright later clarified that current discussions referred to “non-critical” system tests, not full nuclear explosions.
