Pakistan is continuing to expand its nuclear bomb-making facilities despite growing international concern that advancing Islamist extremists could overrun one or more of its atomic weapons plants or seize sufficient radioactive material to make a dirty bomb, US nuclear experts and former officials say.
David Albright, previously a senior weapons inspector for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq, said commercial satellite photos showed two plutonium-producing reactors were nearing completion at Khushab, about 250km southwest of Islamabad.
“In the current climate, with Pakistan’s leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question,” Albright said in a report issued by the independent Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
Albright warned that the continuing development of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program could trigger a renewed nuclear arms race with India. But he suggested a more immediate threat to nuclear security arose from recent territorial advances in northwest Pakistan by indigenous Taliban and foreign jihadi forces opposed to the Pakistani government and its US and British allies.
“Current US policy, focused primarily on shoring up Pakistan’s resources for fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, has had the unfortunate effect of turning the US into more of a concerned bystander of Pakistan’s expansion of its ability to produce nuclear weapons,” Albright said in the report, co-authored with Paul Brannan.
The Khushab reactors are situated on the border of Punjab and North-West Frontier province, the scene of heavy fighting between Taliban and government forces. Another allegedly vulnerable facility is the Gadwal uranium enrichment plant, less than 100km south of Buner district, where some of the fiercest clashes have taken place in recent days. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside an air weapons complex near Gadwal in December 2007, injuring several people.
Uncertainty has long surrounded Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile. The country is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or the comprehensive test ban treaty. Nor has it submitted its nuclear facilities to international inspection since joining the nuclear club in 1998, when it detonated five nuclear devices. It is estimated to have about 200 atomic bombs.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told US Congress recently that Pakistan had dispersed its nuclear warheads to different locations across the country in order to improve their security.
But John Bolton, a former senior official in the Bush administration, said at the weekend that this move could have the opposite effect to that intended.
“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,” he said in an article in the Wall Street Journal.
Since there was a real risk of governmental collapse, Bolton said the US must be prepared for military intervention to seize control of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile and safeguard western interests.
Pakistani Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani dismissed the warnings, saying: “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.”
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