US President Donald Trump alleged Sunday that countries including Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan have conducted underground nuclear tests unknown to the public, and that the United States would follow suit.
"Russia's testing, and China's testing, but they don't talk about it," he told CBS's "60 Minutes" programme, in an interview released Sunday. "I don't want to be the only country that doesn't test," he said, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of nations allegedly testing their arsenals.
“Russia's testing, and China's testing, but they don't talk about it. You know, we're an open society. We're different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise your people are gonna report-- they don't have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do. No, we're gonna test, because they test and others test. And certainly North Korea's been testing. Pakistan's been testing,” the US president maintained.
Confusion has surrounded Trump's order that the United States begin testing, particularly if he meant conducting the country's first nuclear explosion since 1992.
The 79-year-old Republican first made his surprise announcement by social media post on Thursday, minutes before entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea.
The announcement came in the wake of Russia saying it had tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik, and a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone.
Asked directly if he planned for the United States to detonate a nuclear weapon for the first time in more than three decades, Trump told CBS: "I'm saying that we're going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes."
No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades. Russia and China have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996 respectively.
Pressed on the topic, Trump said: "They don't go and tell you about it."
"As powerful as they are, this is a big world. You don't necessarily know where they're testing."
"They test way underground where people don't know exactly what's happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration," he added.
Trump's energy secretary on Sunday however downplayed that the United States was planning to set off a nuclear explosion. "I think the tests we're talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions," Chris Wright said in a Fox News interview on Sunday.
"These are what we call 'non-critical explosions,' so you're testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry and they set up the nuclear explosion," he said.
The United States has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.
In the interview, Trump, however, defended his decision to resume nuclear testing, arguing that Washington cannot remain the only power showing restraint while Russia, China, and North Korea continue their weapons programmes, even as he acknowledged the United States already possesses enough arms “to blow up the world 150 times."
“We have more nuclear weapons than any other country. And I think we should do something about denuclearisation. I discussed that with both President Putin and President Xi. We have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 150 times. Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons, and China will have a lot," Trump said.–Agencies