REUTERS/Johanna Geron/Pool/File PhotoSingapore, June 2 (Reuters) - A senior NATO official on Friday urged Beijing to be more open about its accelerating nuclear weapons build-up, saying that as a global power, China had a responsibility to improve transparency. "As a global power it has a global responsibility to be more transparent," Lapsley said, adding that the scale and pace of the Chinese build-up was "really striking". "NATO is open to dialogue, but it can't substitute dialogue between the U.S. and China," he said. The Pentagon's annual China report, released in November 2022, noted that Beijing's nuclear programme had gathered pace and now has more than 400 operational nuclear warheads - a figure still far below U.S. and Russian stockpiles. A nuclear power since the early 1960s, China for decades maintained a small number of nuclear warheads and missiles as a deterrent under a "no first use" pledge that remains its official policy despite Beijing's broader military modernisation under President Xi Jinping.

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Persons: Johanna Geron, Angus Lapsley, Lapsley, Xi Jinping, Anthony Albanese, Greg Torode, Gerry Doyle Organizations: NATO, REUTERS, Atlantic Treaty, Defence Policy, U.S, Pentagon, People's Liberation Army, Australian, Thomson Locations: Brussels, Belgium, Singapore, Beijing, China, Atlantic, United States, France, Britain, Australia