Two reports, one in the New York Times, the other in the Washington Post, raise doubts about the safety of PakistanÂ’s nuclear weapons, expressing the fear that in the event the present upheaval continues, the security of these weapons could be compromised.David Sanger writes in the New York Times much of the fear in Washington last week was the leaks in PakistanÂ’s nuclear programme would resume and the government might even lose control over a nuclear arsenal of uncertain size, estimated at from 55 to 115 weapons.
Noting that Gen Musharraf had dismissed such possibilities in 2005, but over the years he has said many things that turned out to be too optimistic, including a declaration at the White House that Osama bin Laden was probably dead. Bush administration officials have quietly begun debating just how bad things could get in a country whose nuclear controls are just seven years old and have never been tested by chaos, street turmoil or a violent government overthrow. “We just don’t have any idea how this is going to unfold,” one senior administration official conceded to the newspaper late on Friday. “There is some hope that the military as an institution could reliably keep things under control no matter who is in charge, but that is just a hope.