Pakistan Nueclear Safety Plans

Americans know nothing, they can only guess: CJSC
By Mariana Baabar

ISLAMABAD: In a rare show of coming out directly and making a blunt comment, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Tariq Majid, has strongly reacted to a story in The News on November 9, particularly its caption ‘Pakistan Nuclear Security Plan: How much does US really know?’ He stated, “only that much as they can guess, and nothing more”.

The CJCSC said since the United States does not know everything about Pakistan’s highly guarded nuclear arsenal, all they can do is to “guess” about the different aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. He said Pakistan does not need to negotiate with any other country to physically augment its security forces, which are “more capable than their forces anyway”.

So serious were the allegations of an article by Seymour M Hersh, published in ‘The New Yorker’ and reproduced by The News, that the CJCSC felt compelled to term it ‘absurd’ and plain ‘mischievous’, only a day after a strongly worded reaction was put out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

General Tariq, in whose domain lies the Strategic Plans Division, stated in a statement issued by the ISPR on Monday that, “We have operationalised a very effective nuclear security regime, which incorporates very stringent custodial and access controls. As overall custodian of the development of our strategic programme, 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 CJCSC stressed that Pakistan’s engagement with other countries through IAEA or bilaterally, is to learn more about the international best practices for security of such assets.

“These are based on two clearly spelt out Red Lines - ‘non intrusiveness’ and ‘our right to pick and choose’. Also, our security apparatus has the capacity and is fully geared to meet all conceivable challenges, therefore, 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,” he added.

When DG ISPR General Athar Abbas was asked by The News about the fact that at one point, amongst other things, the Bush administration had spent $ 100 million on Pakistan to upgrade and improve security of its nuclear arsenal, training of personnel, etc, and that there were exchanges of Pakistani personnel from the Strategic Plans Division who regularly visited the US to gain more expertise, he responded, “This is true that in the realm of improving our security this did take place. But the important fact is that we clearly incorporated two issues that General Tariq has pointed out. These interactions would be “non-intrusive” and that Pakistan had the right to “pick and choose”.