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Pakistan feared as source of nuclear terror

By Khalid Hasan

Washington: Pakistan and Russia have been called “nations of greatest concern” as potential sources of nuclear weapon or fissile material leaks to terrorists.

A new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on nuclear terrorism said, “The fear regarding Pakistan is that some members of the armed forces might covertly give a weapon to terrorists or that, if President Musharraf were overthrown, an Islamic fundamentalist government or a state of chaos in Pakistan might enable terrorists to obtain a weapon.” While, the report concedes, it would be difficult for terrorists to mount a nuclear attack on a US city, such an attack is plausible and would have catastrophic consequences, in one scenario killing over a half-million people and causing damage of over $1 trillion. “Terrorists or rogue states might acquire a nuclear weapon in several ways. The nations of greatest concern as potential sources of weapons or fissile materials are widely thought to be Russia and Pakistan.”

Russia, the report notes, has many tactical nuclear weapons, which tend to be lower in yield but more dispersed and apparently less secure than strategic weapons. It also has much highly enriched uranium (HEU) and weapons grade plutonium, some said to have inadequate security. Many experts believe that technically sophisticated terrorists could, without state support, fabricate a nuclear bomb from HEU. However, opinion is divided on whether terrorists could make a bomb using plutonium.

CRS warns that terrorists might also obtain HEU from the more than 130 research reactors worldwide. “If terrorists acquired a nuclear weapon, they could use many means in an attempt to bring it into the United States. This nation has many thousands of miles of land and sea borders, as well as several hundred ports of entry. Terrorists might smuggle a weapon across lightly-guarded stretches of borders, ship it in using a cargo container, place it in a hold of a crude oil tanker, or bring it in using a truck, a boat, or a small airplane,” argues the analysis.

The report describes the architecture of the US response as “layered defence.” The goal is to try to block terrorists at various stages in their attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon and smuggle it into the US. The underlying concept is that the probability of success is higher if many layers are used rather than just one or two. Layers include threat reduction programmes in the former USSR, efforts to secure HEU worldwide, control of former Soviet and other borders, the Container Security Initiative and Proliferation Security Initiative, and US border security.

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