It was the third test of the "Ghaznavi" or Hatf-III missile, a surface-to-surface projectile with a range of 290 kilometres (180 miles), the military announced in a statement.

Most of this year's tests have been seen as bids to ease domestic fears that Pakistan may be pressured to dismantle its atomic programme, after it emerged key nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had been involved in proliferation.

"It is aimed at reassuring hawks in Pakistan that the Musharraf government has no plan to freeze the country's nuclear programme," military analyst and retired general Talat Masood told AFP.

Pakistan informed its neighbours ahead of the test, the military said. More tests were planned to maintain the pace of its nuclear and missile programme, it added.

"The test was part of a series of tests planned... in order to verify certain parameters and to further refine different subsystems of the missile," the military said in a statement.

"The flight data collected indicates that all the design parameters have been successfully validated."

The launch comes one week after the prime ministers of rival neighbours India and Pakistan met for the first time, in the middle of a step-by-step peace process two years after they nearly went to war.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said he was "happy" about the successful missile test and that the best guarantee of peace in the region was to improve the country's defence capability.

"No one could dare cast an evil eye on Pakistan", he told state-run PTV.

Analyst Masood said both India and Pakistan were trying peace moves alongside a military buildup.

"This parallel and contradictory development will continue for sometime until the peace process comes to a satisfactory conclusion," he added.

Last month India tested the naval version of its Prithvi-III nuclear-capable ballistic missile, which has a range of up to 300 kilometres (188 miles).

It followed Pakistan's test of the intermediate range Ghauri missile, capable of carrying nuclear warheads deep inside India.

The Ghauri or Hatf V, with a range of 1,500 kilometres (932 miles), was test-fired on October 12, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of President General Pervez Musharraf's assumption of power in a bloodless military coup.

Pakistan was plunged into a nuclear proliferation scandal when Khan, the father of its nuclear program, confessed in February to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

"The significance of the latest test is that it signals (to India) that we are not lagging behind as far as the country's defense is concerned," Masood said.

Pakistan said Monday it had agreed new dates with India for talks between their top foreign ministry officials next month to review progress on the peace process.

Islamabad also will host a meeting on nuclear issues on December 14-15 to discuss a possible agreement on advance information about nuclear tests.

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