Pakistan's recent territorial concessions to the Taliban have intensified U.S. fears that extremists might infiltrate sensitive atomic sites or wrest control of nuclear weapons in transit through the country, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, April 30).
(May. 4) -
Pakistani troops patrol a contested area in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Recent gains by local extremists have raised concerns about the security of the country's nuclear arsenal (Tariq Mahmood/Getty Images).
Pakistan is believed to store most of its atomic arsenal south of Islamabad. However, leaders have not divulged some nuclear-weapon storage locations due to concerns that the United States might attempt to destroy or take control of the sites if they appeared vulnerable to militant encroachment, Pakistani officials said.
The militant gains have undermined U.S. confidence in Pakistan's assertions that its nuclear weapons are safe, one U.S. official said.
“We are largely relying on assurances, the same assurances we have been hearing for years,” said the official, who represented the Bush administration in discussions with Pakistan and continues work under President Barack Obama. “The worse things get, the more strongly they hew to the line, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.’”
“For years I was concerned about the weapons materials in Pakistan, the materials in the laboratories,” added former Energy Department intelligence chief Rolf Mowatt-Larssen.
“I’m still worried about that, but with what we’re seeing, I’m growing more concerned about something going missing in transport,” he said.
The Bush administration conducted a secret $100 million program focused on upgrading physical security measures at Pakistani nuclear facilities and training personnel who guard the sites (see GSN, Nov. 19, 2007). The project's activities have ebbed, though, and Islamabad never revealed how it used a large portion of the funds or how many nuclear weapons are in its stockpile, Times reported.
Still, officials stressed that Pakistan's estimated stockpile of between 60 and 100 nuclear weapons does not appear to be in immediate danger.
Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari are set to meet Wednesday in Washington, but U.S. officials refused to specify whether the leaders planned to discuss Pakistan's nuclear security. Zardari heads the National Command Authority, Pakistan's nuclear oversight body, but army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is believed to wield the strongest influence over the country's atomic arsenal (David Sanger, New York Times, May 3).
The United States should plan to take control of Pakistani nuclear holdings if their security were jeopardized, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
"There is a tangible risk that several weapons could slip out of military control. Such weapons could then find their way to al-Qaeda or other terrorists, with obvious global implications," he wrote.
"To prevent catastrophe will require considerable American effort. … We must strengthen pro-American elements in Pakistan's military, roll back Taliban advances and, together with our increased efforts in Afghanistan, decisively defeat the militants on either side of the border," according to Bolton. "At the same time, we should contemplate whether and how to extract as many nuclear weapons as possible from Pakistan, thus somewhat mitigating the consequences of regime collapse" (John Bolton, Wall Street Journal, May 2).
A Pakistani plan to construct two new nuclear reactors has further bolstered U.S. worries about the security of the country's sensitive nuclear sites, the McClatchy News Service reported (see GSN, Nov. 21, 2008).
"Clearly we have a rising threat level," one U.S. defense official said. "I don't think it likely that the jihadists will make a mad dash tomorrow (to seize a nuclear site). But in the course of time, I see a rising threat" (Jonathan Landay, McClatchy News Service/Yahoo!News, May 1).
Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani said U.S. officials and independent experts were exaggerating the militant threat, the London Guardian reported yesterday.
"The specter of extremist Taliban taking over a nuclear-armed Pakistan is not only a gross exaggeration, it could also lead to misguided policy prescriptions from Pakistan's allies, including our friends in Washington," Haqqani said.
A high-level British official added: "There is obvious [British] concern but it is not at the same level as the State Department. We are not concerned Pakistan is about to collapse. The Taliban are not going to take Islamabad. There is a lot of resilience in the Pakistani state" (Simon Tisdall, London Guardian, May 3).
Meanwhile, funding for the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission's high-security projects has been slashed by more than one-third, the Pak Tribune reported.
The 35-percent reduction has forced the commission to shutter or suspend many of its sensitive nuclear programs, a source said, adding that commission's unclassified projects faced a 15-percent funding reduction.
The cuts could deal a major blow to Pakistan's nuclear work, according to high-level Pakistani scientists and government sources.
Maj. Gen. Khalid Mushtaq of the commission's member administration admitted that worldwide economic instability was forcing his agency to make financial alterations, but he said the changes would not hinder Pakistan's nuclear work (Pak Tribune, May 1).