By KUNA
Islamabad : In a rare presentation on Saturday here, Pakistans official in charge of strategic weapons dust off western fears that the countrys nuclear weapon could fall into militants hands and said that security around the facilities was foolproof.
“We are capable of thwarting all types of threats whether these be insider, outsider, or a combination”, said Lieutenant General (rtd) Khalid Kidwai, Director General of the Strategic Planning Division (SPD), while addressing a gathering of foreign media.
He said that security measures around nuclear facilities have been instituted in such a manner “to make them foolproof”.
“We have instituted command and control structures”, he said, adding that the state of alertness has gone up.
Responding to a question about mounting western allies including the United States concerns over the security of nuclear weapons of Pakistan amid growing political and security crisis, the general termed such fears as based on a lack of objective understanding of Pakistan’s ground situation and lack of information.
“There is no conceivable scenario, political or violent, in which Pakistan will fall to the extremists of the al Qaeda or Taliban”, he said.
He said near 10,000 troops were deployed around the nuclear facilities as a part of the command and control structure and that there was no terrorist threat as yet.
Despite governments repeated assurances western allies have been expressing huge concerns over Pakistan’s nuclear facilities since 2004 when the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, Dr. A. Q. Khan, confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
He received a presidential pardon and has since been under house arrest. Pakistan’s government says he has revealed the full extent of his activities.
President Pervez Musharraf, who is also the countrys National Command Authority chairman, before embarking on visit to European countries said that Pakistan stands as a respectable nuclear state having excellent safety and security standards at all its nuclear power plants.