India Claims Pakistan is Lost

[tomahawk6]

I hope the Obama admistration is up to this challenge. Letting the nukes fall into the hands of the taliban isnt an option for India and the US.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-thinks-Pak-N-sites-already-in-radical-hands-Report/articleshow/4537037.cms

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan's restive frontier province are "already partly" in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington's confidence in the security of the troubled nation's nuclear arsenal.

Claims about the high-level exchange between New Delhi and Washington were made in the Debka, a journal said to have close ties with Israeli intelligence, under the headline "Singh warns Obama: Pakistan is lost." The brief story said the Indian prime minister had named Pakistani nuclear sites in the areas which were Taliban-Qaida strongholds and said the sites are already partly in the hands of "Muslim extremists." A sub-head to the story said "India gets ready for a Taliban-ruled nuclear neighbor."

There was no official word from either Washington or New Delhi about the exchanges, with India in the throes of an election and US winding down for the weekend. But US experts have been greatly perturbed in recent days about what they say is Washington's misplaced confidence in, and lackadaisical approach towards, Pakistan's nuclear assets. The disquiet comes amid reports that Pakistan is ramping up its nuclear arsenal even as the rest of the world is scaling it down.

"It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach," Robert Windrem, a visiting scholar with the Center for Law and Security in New York University and an expert on South Asia nuclear issues told ToI in an interview on Thursday. "Iraq and Iran did not get a similar concessions... and Pakistan has a much worse record of proliferation and security breaches than any other country in the world."

Windrem, a former producer with NBC whose book "Critical Mass" was among the first to red flag Islamabad's proliferation record going back to the 1980s, referred to recent reports and satellite images showing Pakistan building two large new plutonium production reactors in Khushab, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country's nuclear arsenal. The reactors had nothing to do with power-production' they are weapons-specific, and are being built with resources who diversion is enabled by the billions of dollars the US is giving to Pakistan as aid, he said.

Windrem also pointed out that Khushab's former director, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and offered a nuclear weapons tutorial around an Afghanistan campfire, as attested by the former CIA Director George Tenet in his memoir "At the Center of the Storm." Yet successive US administrations had adopted an attitude of benign neglect towards Pakistan's nuclear program and its expansion at a time the country was in growing ferment and under siege within from Islamic extremists.

US officials, going up to the President himself, have repeatedly said in public that they have confidence the Pakistani nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, and they have Islamabad's assurances to this effect. But scholars like Windrem fear Pakistan's nuclear program may already be infected with the virus of radicalism from within, as demonstrated by the Sultan Bashiruddin incident.

 

[CougarKing]

Doesn't this belong more in either the India or Pakistan Instability Superthreads?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Does this means we are going to see pictures of Pakistan on milk jugs with: "Have you seen this country?"  ;D

 

[Xiang]

Rest assured this is nothing more than Indian rhetoric.  Pakistani nuclear sites are well guarded and are in no way under threat of Taliban take over.

The Indian agenda against Pakistan has been going a little overboard lately. 

For instance, you cannot have a launch site "partly in the hands of the Taliban".  Either it is or it isn't.  You can't be "partly pregnant" or "partly dead".

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Rest assured this is nothing more than Indian rhetoric.  Pakistani nuclear sites are well guarded and are in no way under threat of Taliban take over.

The Indian agenda against Pakistan has been going a little overboard lately. 

For instance, you cannot have a launch site "partly in the hands of the Taliban".  Either it is or it isn't.  You can't be "partly pregnant" or "partly dead".

...and you know your, highlighted, statement to be absolutely true? And what's your proof?

Not picking a fight, just wondering, as no one right in the area seems to know 100% for sure what is going on there.

 

[Xiang]

1) Pakistani SSG are tasked with guarding these nuclear IRBM sites in the event of them being on high alert.  The SSG are trained by US Delta Force. 

2) If any such sites were in jeopardy, India would not be sitting around. 

3) Indian Defense Research and Development Organization has claimed to be able to neutralize Pakistani launch sites.  If they were threatened in any way, India would act.

4) The US would be all over Pakistan (literally) if these sites were "partly in control" by Islamic extremest.   

This is simply another Indian smear campaign.  None of the above can be considered "solid proof" but given the circumstances and lack of action on part of the US, I believe it's safe to make the assumption that the Indian claim holds little water.

 

[Xiang]

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090521/nukes_pakistan_090521/20090521?hub=Canada

Pakistani nukes secure, despite MacKay warnings

Updated Thu. May. 21 2009 6:54 PM ET

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- Security around Pakistan's nuclear weapons is "credible" and the threat of them falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue army commanders is remote, Canadian military analysts have concluded.

The assessment, contained in a briefing note last year to the country's top military commander, contradicts recent warnings by Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who said the south Asian state was the most dangerous country on the face of the Earth.

The report, obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws, comes after the Foreign Affairs Department took the unusual step of publicly contradicting the veteran Conservative minister over the issue of potential arms sales to the government in Islamabad.

The document noted that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., Pakistan had taken a number of steps to safeguard its arsenal of 50-60 nuclear warheads.

"Recent domestic instability in Pakistan and the possibility that it could intensify has renewed concern over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons," said the briefing note, written in the aftermath of the assassination of former president Benazir Bhutto.

"Though the threat posed by `insiders' with access to nuclear materials cannot be ruled out, a range of measures implemented in recent years have reduced the likelihood of this threat. Command and control arrangements are credible and have centralized authority for the use of nuclear weapons in the hands of senior government officials and the military."

The report noted that the weapons are disassembled in deep underground bunkers.

The fission cores are removed and placed separately from the non-nuclear explosive detonators. In addition, the warheads are kept nowhere near the missiles and aircraft meant to deliver them.

"This arrangement reduces the likelihood of terrorist theft or `detonation in place' of an assembled nuclear weapon," said the document. "It also minimizes the possibility of an accidental or unauthorized launch of a weapon."

Prior to a trip to Islamabad this week, MacKay had warned that advancing Taliban forces posed a grave threat.

"Let's not forget what's at stake, in that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Who is in control of those nuclear weapons is of great concern to everyone, as it should be," MacKay said in an interview at the end of April.

A spokesman for the defence minister noted that the analysis was a year old and that MacKay's comments were in the context of rising violence and instability in tribal areas along the Afghan border.

"The minister's concern is that he wants Pakistan to remain strong and that it can defend against the Islamist threat within its own border," said communications director Dan Dugas.

In an interview this week during the visit MacKay said Canada was prepared to end its 11-year arms embargo on the sale of military technology to Pakistan -- a statement that angered India, which said the high-tech weapons would in all likelihood be turned on them.

The comments also shocked the Foreign Affairs Department, which took the unusual step of publicly contradicting MacKay, who once was foreign minister.

"Canada's policy regarding military exports to Pakistan remains unchanged," said Catherine Loubier, director of communications for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.

The bottom line: "There are no plans to lift restrictions on the arms sales ban with Pakistan."

MacKay was visiting HMCS Winnipeg on anti-pirating operations in the Middle East and not available for comment.

The contradictions are baffling to the NDP's foreign affairs critic, who called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to rein in a minister who had overstepped his bounds.

"What is going on?" asked New Democrat MP Paul Dewar, who criticized MacKay the day before over the arms proposal.

He said southwest Asia is a tinder box ready to explode and the minister has succeeded over the last three weeks in alienating both Pakistan and India with ill-timed musings.

"What you are trying to do is get both groups together so that they're not at each other's throats," Dewar said.

"You don't get people working together by ticking them off."

Dewar said the recent incidents are even more troubling because MacKay also warned about a resurgent Russia and airspace incursions in the Arctic only to be contradicted by a leaked report that showed relations with Moscow have continued normally.

Dugas said the minister stands by his assessment of the Russian threat and that Canada is doing its duty within NORAD.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said the contradictions make Canada look foolish in the eyes of the international community.

"This is kind of thing that leads other countries to take Canada much less seriously."