Hans Rustad Pakistan har lidd under oversvømmelse og en dårlig økonomi, men velger å satse enorme summer på å utvide sitt atomvåpenprogram. Det vil gjøre Pakistan til verdens fjerde største atommakt om bare få år.
At USA ikke dropper Pakistan har å gjøre med landets atomarsenal. Det må ikke falle i hendene på ekstremister. Men nå viser det seg at den voldsomme ekspansjonen i atomprogrammet, med bygging av tungtvannsrekatorer og gjevinningsanlegg, betyr en potensielt mye større fare for at anriket materiale faller i gale hender.
Olli Heinonen, the UN’s chief nuclear inspector until last year, said he believed Pakistan could have the world’s fourth biggest nuclear arsenal by the end of the decade, as a result of a programme of rapid expansion involving the construction of four military reactors and two reprocessing plants for producing weapons-grade plutonium.
«It is really important that the security system is not compromised. The investigation has to be wide enough, not just into why Bin Laden happened to be in this particular town. The whole security regime has to be reviewed to ensure that the nuclear assets are secure,» said Heinonen.
Until now, the US has publicly accepted Pakistani assurances that its nuclear warheads – of which there are now thought to be about 100 – are under tight military control, but Heinonen said there were greater concerns about the security of the nuclear reactors and reprocessing plants, where the plutonium is made. «It is easier to steal from these bulk-handling facilities, and the question is: are they really as well-secured as the warheads? There is no international monitoring whatsoever at these places.»
David Albright the head of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington said: «He was right in the heart of Pakistan and active, which raises the question that Bin Laden was more active than we thought, and that he may have been trying to infiltrate the nuclear programme by recruiting an insider. I’m sure [US officials] are looking frantically for that.»
Bin Laden had declared the acquisition of a nuclear bomb a «religious duty», and his top lieutenant in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, said two years ago that the group hoped to seize and use weapons from Pakistan’s arsenal.
«There are thousands of people involved in the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium,» said Albright, adding that Pakistan’s expansion programme would inevitably put strains on security. «If you have to hire a lot of people at once time, it’s harder to do the security checks and harder to monitor them.»
Earlier this year, ISIS published a satellite photograph that it said showed a reactor under construction at the Kushab nuclear complex in Punjab province. If confirmed, it would be the fourth heavy water reactor to be built at the site, where work appears to be accelerating. Pakistan has one reprocessing plant for separating plutonium from spent nuclear fuel near Islamabad, and is thought to be building another at Chashma, near to two new civilian reactors it is building with Chinese help.
«When more plants are producing and reprocessing more fissile material and there is more of it moving around, there is more chanced of it being seized,» said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former state department official now a proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
