Calling US President Joe Biden’s statement on nuclear Pakistan completely baseless, Pakistan has said that the country’s command and control system was completely safe and secure.

Addressing a news conference in Gujranwala on Saturday, Federal Minister for Energy Khurram Dastgir said the American president has no grounds to give such a statement about Pakistan.

The minister said that international organisations had, on several occasions, declared that Pakistan’s nuclear programme was in safe hands. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F1_9LCjIoU&t=51s

Dastgir rejected Biden’s statement, calling it “baseless”. “International agencies have, not once but several times, verified Pakistan’s atomic deterrent and said that our command and control system is secure. It has all the protection that is required,” he said. 

Addressing a Democratic congressional campaign committee reception on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said Pakistan may be “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” as the country has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion”.

A transcript of the address, published on the White House’s website, quoted Biden as saying: “… And what I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

The US president’s remarks were made in the context of the changing geopolitical situation globally. He said the world was changing rapidly and countries were rethinking their alliances. “And the truth of the matter is — I genuinely believe this — that the world is looking to us. Not a joke. Even our enemies are looking to us to figure out how we figure this out, what we do.”

There was a lot at stake, Biden said, emphasising that the US had the capacity to lead the world to a place it had never been before.

“Did any of you ever think you’d have a Russian leader, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, threatening the use of tactical nuclear weapons that would — could only kill three, four thousand people and be limited to make a point?

“Did anybody think we’d be in a situation where China is trying to figure out its role relative to Russia and relative to India and relative to Pakistan?”

Talking about his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the US president termed him as a man who knew what he wanted but had an “enormous” array of problems.

“How do we handle that? How do we handle that relative to what’s going on in Russia? And what I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion,” Biden said.

US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price had said on Tuesday that the country “value[s] our long-standing cooperation with Pakistan”, adding that there were a number of areas where interests aligned.