It seems the hawks in the US will not rest or stop fear mongering as long as we have nuclear arsenal
Is this mere propaganda or justifiable concern?
Is Pakistan siphoning off US financial assistance for nuclear programme at a time when we are supposedly fighting insurgents in our North-West and there is global economic recession?
The country is believed to possess 80-100 nuclear warheads
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/14-pakistan-rapidly-adding-its-nuclear-arms-says-us-zj-02](http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/14-pakistan-rapidly-adding-its-nuclear-arms-says-us-zj-02)
WASHINGTON: In confidential congress briefings, members have been told that despite being racked by an insurgency, Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal, raising doubts on Capitol Hill’s proposed military aid of billions of dollars being directed to Pakistan’s nuclear program, the New York Times reported.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, confirmed the estimation of the expanded arsenal in a one-word reply to a question on Thursday amidst a drawn out Senate testimony. With the Defence Secretary Robert Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of the increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
‘Yes,’ he said, adding nothing else, visibly aware of Pakistan’s sensitivity to any discussion about its nuclear strategy or security.
Some officials inside the Obama administration say Pakistan is compelled to spend heavily on new nuclear arms which has become a source of growing concern, because the nuclear material production has increased at a time when Washington has been focused on assuring the security of an arsenal of 80 to 100 weapons, so that they will never fall into the hands of insurgents.
The administration’s effort is also complicated by the fact that **Pakistan is producing an unknown amount of new bomb-grade uranium and once a series of new reactors is completed, bomb-grade plutonium for a new generation of weapons. **
President Obama has made a global call asking all nations to stop producing more fissile material — the hardest part of making a nuclear weapon — but so far has said nothing in public about Pakistan’s activities.
Bruce Riedel, the Brookings Institution scholar who served as the co-author of Obama’s review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, reflected the administration’s concern in a recent interview.
‘Pakistan has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth,’ the New York Times quoted Riedel as saying.
Obama administration officials communicating to Congress, reiterated that their intent was to assure that military aid to Pakistan was directed toward counterterrorism and not diverted.
But Admiral Mullen’s public confirmation of the increasing arsenal — a view widely held in both classified and unclassified analyses — clearly aggravates the Congress’s discomfort.
Whether that discomfort might result in a delay or reduction in aid to Pakistan is still unclear.
Congressional briefings have taken place in recent weeks and it has considered proposals to spend $3 billion over the next five years to train and equip Pakistan’s military for counterinsurgency warfare. That aid would come on top of $7.5 billion in civilian assistance.
None of the proposed military assistance is directed at the nuclear program. So far, America’s aid to Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure has been limited to a $100 million classified program to help Pakistan secure its weapons and materials from seizure by Al Qaeda, the Taliban or ‘insiders’ with insurgent loyalties.
But the billions in new proposed American aid, officials acknowledge, could free other money for Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, at a time when **Pakistani officials have expressed concern that their nuclear program is facing a budget crunch for the first time, worsened by the global economic downturn. **
**Pakistan’s nuclear program employs tens of thousands of Pakistanis, including about 2,000 believed to possess ‘critical knowledge’ about how to produce a weapon. **
The dimensions of the Pakistani buildup are not fully understood. ‘We see them scaling up their centrifuge facilities,’ said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which has been monitoring Pakistan’s continued efforts to buy materials on the black market, and analyzing satellite photographs of two new plutonium reactors less than 100 miles from where Pakistani forces are currently fighting the Taliban.
‘The Bush administration turned a blind eye to how this is being ramped up,’ he said. ‘And of course, with enough pressure, all this could be preventable.’
This buildup presents Obama with a potential conflict between two national security priorities, some aides concede. One is to win passage of a global agreement to stop the production of fissile material — the uranium or plutonium used to produce weapons. Pakistan has never agreed to any limits and is one of three countries, along with India and Israel, that never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Yet the other imperative is a huge infusion of financial assistance into Afghanistan and Pakistan, money considered crucial to helping stabilize governments in the face of terrorist and insurgent violence.
Senior members of Congress were already pressing for assurances from Pakistan that the American military assistance would be used to fight the insurgency, and not be siphoned off for more conventional military programs to counter Pakistan’s historic adversary, India.
Official confirmation that Pakistan has accelerated expansion of its nuclear program only added to the consternation of those in Congress who were already voicing serious concern about the security of those warheads.
Similar concerns about seeking guarantees that American military assistance to Pakistan would be focused on battling insurgents also were expressed by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee chairman.
‘Unless Pakistan’s leaders commit, in deeds and words, their country’s armed forces and security personnel to eliminating the threat from militant extremists, and unless they make it clear that they are doing so, for the sake of their own future, then no amount of assistance will be effective,’ Mr. Levin said.
A spokesman for the Pakistani government contacted Friday declined to comment on whether his nation was expanding its nuclear weapons program, but said the government was ‘maintaining the minimum, credible deterrence capability.’ He warned against linking American financial assistance to Pakistan’s actions on its weapons program.
‘Conditions or sanctions on this issue did not work in the past, and this will not send a positive message to the people of Pakistan,’ the New York Times quoted the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying.