US Negotiates Access to Pakistan Nukes

"We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody's integrity," Zardari said.

“The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system,” a former senior intelligence official told Hersh in the November 16 edition of the New Yorker magazine.

"We saw their target list and their mobilization plans. We got their security plans, so we could augment them in case of a breach of security.

According to Hersh, Washington has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with Islamabad to secure its nuclear arsenal.

The understandings would allow specially-trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani nuclear installations in the time of a crisis.

In return, Islamabad would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and improve their housing and facilities.

“We’re there to help the Pakistanis, but we’re also there to extend our own axis of security to their nuclear stockpile,” said the intelligence official.

According to Hersh, high-level cooperation on nuclear security has begun between Washington and Islamabad following the 9/11 attacks.

Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf admitted allowing State Department nonproliferation experts insight into the command and control of Pakistani arsenal and its on-site safety and security procedures.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country.

Fears have been growing over the safety of the nuclear arsenal over the growing Taliban violence in the south Asian country.

The principal fear is that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

The Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads and their triggers to be stored separately from each other, and from their delivery devices.

The arrangement serves as a safeguard in case of a quickly escalating confrontation with India.

"We give comfort to each other, and the comfort level is good, because everybody respects everybody's integrity," Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said.

"Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban,” he said.

"A mutiny would never happen in Pakistan. It's a fear being spread by the few who seek to scare the many."

"If the Pakistan Army does one thing, it will be to ensure the nuclear assets stay with them," said Roy-Chaudhury.

Safe

But analysts believe that the Pakistani nuclear installations are well-guarded against militant attacks.

"It's likely they would fail,” Sharon Squassoni, professor at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington told Reuters, of a militant attack on the nuclear facilities.

“It's very likely they would fail, but that would be a bit too close for comfort."

Analysts say the army would do everything in its capacity to secure the nuclear arsenal against threats.

"If the Pakistan Army does one thing, it will be to ensure the nuclear assets stay with them," said Rahul Roy-Chaudhury at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Among security measures taken to secure the nuclear arsenal, warheads are not mated with aircraft and missile delivery systems.

Nor are they moved except in times of crisis -- as happened in 1999 and 2001/2002 during confrontations with India.

The army is also believed to have developed a rudimentary system to electronically lock its nuclear weapons, modeled on the US Permissive Action Link (PAL).

"These are the key strategic assets of the Pakistan Army. This is what prevents India from attacking them, in their view," said Roy-Chaudhury.

Pakistan and India fought three wars, two of them over the disputed Kashmir region, since independence in 1947.

The Pakistani military is also running an intensive personnel vetting program to prevent infiltration of extremists into nuclear facilities.

"He is very much in control of things," Roy-Chaudhury said of General Khalid Kidwai, head of the army’s Strategic Plans Division, which runs the nuclear program.

“I believe he runs a strong counter-intelligence program. Anyone employed is closely vetted; senior officers are selected personally by him."

Click to read Seymour Hersh article