The US has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine.
The journalist wrote that during meetings with current and former officials in Washington and Pakistan, he was told that the agreements would allow specially trained US units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.
At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities, the report says.
The principal fear was that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead, Hersh said.
The Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads and their triggers to be stored separately from each other, and from their delivery devices.
The arrangement serves as a safeguard in case of a quickly escalating confrontation with India but also makes the weapons vulnerable during shipment and reassembly, the report points out.
“We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody’s integrity,” Hersh quoted Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as telling him in an interview about the security relationship with Washington.
“Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban,” Zardari went on to say. “A mutiny would never happen in Pakistan. It’s a fear being spread by the few who seek to scare the many.”
Meanwhile, former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that his government had given US State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of the Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures, the report said.
In Islamabad, US embassy spokesman Larry Schwartz did not confirm or deny the report, but noted that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had recently stated that the US had confidence in the ability of the Pakistani government to protect its nuclear programs and materials.
“The United States has no intention to seize Pakistani nuclear weapons or material,” Schwartz said.
“Pakistan is a key ally in our common effort to fight violent extremists and foster regional security. We work cooperatively with Pakistan on a wide range of security assistance initiatives,” he said.
Meanwhile, analysts say Pakistani nuclear installations are so well guarded that Islamist militants behind a wave of violence in the country’s heartland would find it very hard to storm them and steal material for a nuclear bomb.
But the sophistication of recent attacks and their proximity to Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure suggest this risk, while low, remains a cause for worry.
“I don’t think it is realistic any more to say there is no threat to these weapons, that they are totally safe,” said Shaun Gregory at Britain’s University of Bradford.
The nightmare scenario would be of militants using a suicide bombing as a diversionary tactic to send in a team of commandos — similar to those who attacked the Pakistan Army’s own headquarters last month in Rawalpindi.
Then, and given the secrecy surrounding Pakistan’s nuclear program this would need collusion and information from inside, they would try to grab fissile material for a nuclear bomb.
It is a scenario the army will do everything in its power to avoid.
“If the Pakistan Army does one thing, it will be to ensure the nuclear assets stay with them,” said Rahul Roy-Chaudhury at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
“These are the key strategic assets of the Pakistan Army. This is what prevents India from attacking them, in their view,” he said.
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