Taliban threat: How safe is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal? - International News – News – MSN India - News

Taliban threat: How safe is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal? - International News – News – MSN India - News

The safety of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is a cause for international concern. Even as the Zardari regime is waging a war against Taliban in the Swat valley with support of the US, Taliban has made known its resolve to seize control of the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan and use it to fight the US. The US won't allow Pakistan's nuclear arms to pass into the hands of Taliban. To checkmate that possibility, US has enough safeguards in place to take over Pak's nuclear weapons in case Islamist fighters came close to doing so. US President Barack Obama recently expressed the confidence that Pakistani government has safeguarded its nuclear arsenal. However, no one has been able to ascertain the validity of Pakistan's assurances about their nuclear weapons security.



Pak claims it has successfully conducted five nuclear tests in 1998. None has been able to verify if Pakistan really possesses nuclear weapons and to what extant. Various agencies have made conflicting reports about how many nuclear weapons Pakistan possess. US military intelligence has reported that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is far larger than previously suspected and may be five times as large as that of India. reports. Instead of the previous estimates of 10 to 15 nuclear weapons, the new estimate is that Pakistan has built from 25 to 100 bombs and has the missiles and jet planes to deliver them.

The Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) estimates that Pakistan has built 24-48 HEU-based nuclear warheads, and Carnegie reports that they have produced 585-800 kg of HEU, enough for 30-55 weapons. Pakistan's nuclear warheads are based on an implosion design that uses a solid core of highly enriched uranium and requires an estimated 15-20 kg of material per warhead. According to Carnegie, Pakistan has also produced a small but unknown quantity of weapons grade plutonium, which is sufficient for an estimated 3-5 nuclear weapons.

Pakistani authorities claim that their nuclear weapons are not assembled. They maintain that the fissile cores are stored separately from the non-nuclear explosives packages, and that the warheads are stored separately from the delivery systems. The Pak Defence Department, in a report, contends that "Islamabad's nuclear weapons are probably stored in component form" and that "Pakistan probably could assemble the weapons fairly quickly."

Pakistan has earmarked Rs 50 billion for aid for the northwest in its 2009-10 budget. However, Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi warned that if more money needed to be diverted from state coffers, the country's economy -- and its efforts to fight the Taliban - would suffer.

He said Pakistan would need up to 2.5 billion dollars in emergency relief and for long-term reconstruction of the Swat valley and the surrounding region, once the fighting between government troops and militants, now in its final stage, ends. Government officials had initially estimated a figure of one billion dollars in aid.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday asked for urgent international assistance to his country, arguing the world should rally in support of Pakistani democracy. He noted that the administration of US President Barack Obama recognized that only an economically viable Pakistan could contain the threat of terrorism and the United States had committed 1.5 billion dollars a year for five years to help stabilize the Pakistani economy.

The US has begun lobbying the governments of the oil-rich Arab Muslim countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) to be more generous in helping Pakistan deal with the fallout of the offensive in the Swat valley.

The Taliban and the Al Qaida could spread in other parts of the world if they were not defeated in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has warned.

"Pakistan and the world community cannot afford defeat in the war against terror," Zardari wrote in The Washington Post on Monday.

The Taliban could spread beyond Pakistan's border to India and as far as the Persian Gulf if they were not stopped, foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said seeking more foreign aid to combat the terrorists.

To go by military figures, close to 1,500 Taliban have been killed in the fighting in the Swat, Buner and Lower Dir districts of NWFP. There is, however, no independent confirmation of this as the media has been barred from the battle zone. Some three million civilians have been displaced by the operations in three districts of the North West Frontier Province that entered their 57th day on Monday.