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Analysts doubt bin Laden has nukes

A man reads an interview with Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani national newspaper in Karachi on Saturday. Bin Laden, during an interview with the editor of Urdu-language newspaper Ausaf, published in the country's largest English-language daily, Dawn, said that he has chemical and nuclear weapons. PHOTO: AFP

Living on the run, moving among caves or safe houses in the deserts of Afghanistan may not be the optimum environment for Osama bin Laden to maintain the nuclear weapons he reportedly says he has.

Pakistan's respected Dawn newspaper along with the Urdu Ausaf paper said on Saturday bin Laden claimed in an interview in Afghanistan last Wednesday that he had nuclear and chemical weapons and might use them in response to US attacks.

The White House said it took such remarks very seriously and would do everything to prevent bin Laden from acquiring such weapons of mass destruction.

But does the Saudi-born millionaire militant have the means to acquire such sophisticated technology in a country as war-ravaged and primitive as Afghanistan?

Pakistani analysts say probably not. But they don't rule it out entirely.

"Its an old nightmare about nuclear terrorism, so it's that nightmare coming true," said one nuclear analyst.

Another said Afghanistan, with its primitive society, lack of infrastructure and even the most basic nuclear laboratories, would be unable to provide a safe parking place for development of a nuclear device.

While a conventional nuclear bomb may not have fallen into bin Laden's hands, what is called a dirty nuclear bomb might be possible.

A dirty bomb is a mass of highly radioactive material, the same as that used in a nuclear fission bomb, packed with powerful conventional explosive that sprays the radioactive material widely on detonation.

The impact of a dirty bomb, however, while highly dangerous, is fairly localized since its reach depends on the range of the conventional explosive.

Media reports in the US have suggested that this kind of bomb, which emits injurious rays, is the most likely weapon bin Laden or his al-Qaeda network could possess.

The problem with regular nuclear bombs based on plutonium or uranium is that they have a limited life because the radioactivity of these two elements corrupts components.

Most at risk are the sensitive triggers such as tritium, which has to be recharged every six years, or the delicate beryllium reflector shields.

Anyone trying to maintain such a bomb would require technology not known to exist in Afghanistan.

The size of the bomb, its mechanism and destructive power depend on the level of expertise of scientists and resources available to those developing the weapon. No known nuclear scientist lives in Afghanistan.

And having obtained a nuclear device, delivery is a daunting task that may have even evaded nuclear-power neighbor Pakistan.

By air, by road or by sea, movement of a nuclear arsenal is subject to the most intense of intelligence operations.

Such tight proliferation controls can be evaded with a suitcase bomb. The US and Russia have built bombs of small sizes but there is no evidence any of these are missing.

Pakistan is considered one country that could be a source for bin Laden, but President Pervez Musharraf's government has firmly dismissed such speculation.

On Saturday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman scoffed at suggestions bin Laden had acquired nuclear material from Islamabad.
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