Pakistan rejects report on US security for its nuclear arsenal

Nov 10, 2009, 11:24 GMT

   Islamabad - Pakistan's top military commander rubbished a report that the country was in talks with the United States over 'added security' for its nuclear arsenal, saying the armed forces were capable of safeguarding the arsenal.

   The remarks came after the New Yorker magazine cited anonymous officials as saying the US government was negotiating 'highly sensitive understandings' with Pakistan under which US units could provide added security for its nuclear arsenal in case of a crisis.

   The report by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour M Hersh mirrored growing international concerns, as Islamist militants are increasingly focusing their strikes on high-security targets, including the army's main headquarters.

   But General Tariq Majid, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, rejected the report as 'absurd and plain mischievous.'

   He said the military was fully geared up to meet 'all conceivable challenges.'

   'We do not need to negotiate with any other country to physically augment our security forces, which in any case, we believe, are more capable than their forces,' Majid said in a statement issued late Monday.

   He said Pakistan had operationalized a nuclear security regime that incorporated stringent custodial and access controls.

   However, Majid said Pakistan's engagement with other countries to learn about international security practices was based on clear red lines - 'non intrusiveness' and 'our right to pick and choose.'

   Hersh had quoted an unnamed US intelligence official as saying that Pakistan also gave Washington 'a virtual look' into its entire nuclear apparatus.

   But Majid rejected the claim, saying: 'I reiterate in very unambiguous terms that there is absolutely no question of sharing or allowing any foreign individual, entity or a state, any access to sensitive information about our nuclear assets.'

   The general described himself as the 'overall custodian of the development of our [Pakistan's] strategic programme.'

   Alarmed by the New Yorker's report, local media also raised questions about US insight into the Pakistani nuclear programme, but Majid said that US knowledge was 'only that much as they can guess and nothing more.'

   Many observes in Pakistan believe that Washington wants to see the world's lone Islamic nuclear power disarmed.    

   But US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson said at the weekend that the United States had no intention to seize Pakistani nuclear weapons or material.

   Patterson termed the claims in Hersh's report 'completely false.'

   US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last month said extremists were 'increasingly threatening the authority of the (Pakistani) state, but we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.'

   'We have confidence in the Pakistani government and military's control over nuclear weapons,' Clinton said.