Pakistan’s Nuclear Arms Feared at Risk From Fighting

Source: NY Times

WASHINGTON — As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.

But Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said. Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites. But they said the most senior American and Pakistani officials had not yet engaged on the issue, a process that may begin this week, with President Asif Ali Zardari scheduled to visit Mr. Obama in Washington on Wednesday.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/world/asia/04nuke.html?hp

having access to nukes & nuclear material.

Bliss, they call it...

No need to go on with it ...

The nuclear arsenal of Pakistan is another of the Bush legacies.

http://bushwatch.org/kahn.htm

http://www.madison.com/post/blogs/dailybriefing/135577

There are probably hundreds of stories about how the CIA intervened when Kahn was about to be arrested by Interpol. And of course George HW Bush was head of the CIA at the time.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/aq-khan

We can disagree without acting like that.

You think fear is a good thing? Or what?

Provided you use it to create a conscientious prevention and preparation strategy.

It's only dangerous when you allow the fear to control you, either by living in panic or denial.

And profound lack of civility in your post. That's what I was referring to. I'm not sure how I wasn't clear, my apologies for that.

That's all coming from you. I made the point that reacting emotionally interferes with rational thinking.

As Taliban forces edged to within 60 miles of Islamabad late last month, the Obama administration urgently asked for new intelligence assessments of whether Pakistan's government would survive. In briefings last week, senior officials said, President Obama and his National Security Council were told that neither a Taliban takeover nor a military coup was imminent and that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was safe.

Beyond the immediate future, however, the intelligence was far from reassuring. Security was deteriorating rapidly, particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland.

The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight.

But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050302212.html?hpid=topnews

the reason being US policy on Pakistan is confused at best. The bush admin gave Pak tons of money with no strings attached except Musharraf's phony-words and Obama's admin has to got one more clean-up act to do.

Makes me think, how is Bush not the worst US President ever?

"The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat."

"Much of which" being the operative phrase there . . . Not all.

McClatchy News:

"Pakistan's government is completing two new nuclear reactors to produce plutonium for weapons that would be smaller, lighter and more efficient than the 60-odd highly enriched uranium-fueled warheads that Pakistan is now thought to possess, the officials and experts said . . .

The two new plutonium production reactors are being built next to a reactor at Khushab, about 160 miles southwest of Islamabad, the capital, that's been operating since 1998. It's on the heartland Punjab Province's northern border with the restive North West Frontier Province, much of which is under the Taliban's control or influence . . .

Some U.S. officials and experts, noting that security has been problematic even at some U.S. nuclear facilities, said they doubted that Pakistan's system is foolproof.

'Continued instability in the country could impact these safeguards,' said an April 1 Congressional Research Service report.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/67379.html

And some of those countries have nukes and ballistic missiles of their own that could destroy those sites -- and much of the countryside, or cityscape, around them.

If the sectarian govt fails to destroy their nuke bunkers, it's out of their control.

But all that is something that happens behind closed doors.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090504/pl_nm/us_obama_afghanistan_pakistan

Pakistan's Nukes Within Terrorists' Reach?


SNIP

"There are and have been Pakistani scientists or elements of the complex that have had sympathies and met with people who would be considered to be our enemies," Zarate said.

Shortly before 9/11 Osama bin Laden met directly with two Pakistani nuclear scientists. And former CIA officer Rolf Mowatt Larssen, who knows as much about Pakistan's nuclear complex as any American, says Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers remain its Achilles heel.

"Security is strong," Larssen said, "particularly given the seriousness with which the Pakistani government approaches this unless there are people on the inside who are willing to work with terrorists."

The insiders might not be able to steal a full up weapon but might be able to smuggle out either the material or the know how to make one.

SNIP

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/04/eveningnews/main4990856.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_4990856