ISLAMABAD, May 25 (Reuters) - Pakistan test fired a medium-range, surface-to-surface Ghauri missile on Saturday as tension with India simmered over disputed Kashmir.
**"Pakistan today carried out a successful test fire of its indigenously developed medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile Hatf-V (Ghauri)," the Pakistani military said in a statement.
"According to the data collected from the test all design parameters have been successfully validated." **
Pakistan had said on Friday it would conduct a series of routine missile tests from Saturday until Tuesday and the tests were not linked to a military confrontation with India.
The military statement did not give the range of the missile, say where it had been tested or give information about more tests.
"It demonstrated Pakistan's determination to defend itself, strengthen national security and consolidate strategic balance in the region," the statement said.
The statement said Pakistan had not tested a major missile system since April 1999.
In New Delhi, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on the test.
"We have given our point of view yesterday. We have nothing more to add," the spokeswoman told Reuters.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan and India have been locked in a tense confrontation on their border since a bloody raid on the Indian parliament in December that India blamed on Pakistan-based militants fighting its rule in Kashmir.
Tension rose sharply after a bloody May 14 raid on an Indian army camp in Kashmir which India blamed on the same Islamic groups it held responsible for the parliament attack.
Both sides have massed a million men along their border, backed by missile batteries, tanks and fighter planes, since December.
On Friday, India played down the significance of the tests and said Pakistan had informed it the exercise would involve short- and medium-range missiles.
"The government of India is not particularly impressed by these missile antics, clearly targeted at the domestic audience in Pakistan," an Indian statement said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said on Friday Washington was disappointed at the news of Pakistan's decision to test missiles and urged both sides to refrain from a regional arms race.
"We continue to urge both sides to take steps to restrain their missile programmes and their nuclear weapons programmes, including that there be no operational deployment of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles," he told a Washington news briefing.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir and the potential for another war set off alarm bells around the world.
