Pakistan on Saturday said it has increased security for its nuclear arsenal and installations over the past six months though there are no specific threats of plots or conspiracies to take over the atomic weapons.The country’s institutionalised command and control systems includes 10,000 soldiers who are guarding storage and production facilities for nuclear weapons, said Lt Gen (retired) Khalid Kidwai, the chief of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which is responsible for security and development of the arsenal.Asked if the Government had increased the security for the weapons in the past six months, Kidwai said: “the state of alertness has gone up, most certainly.”At the same time, he made it clear that the SPD’s intelligence had uncovered “no plots or conspiracies” to gain control of the nuclear weapons or to make a “dirty bomb” containing radioactive material.In a rare briefing for the international media at Chaklala garrison near Rawalpindi this morning, Kidwai said: “There is no conceivable scenario, political or violent, in which Pakistan will fall to the extremist of the al-Qaeda or Taliban type.”The briefing came a day after Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani dismissed concerns about the safety of the nuclear weapons “as unrealistic and based on a lack of understanding of Pakistan’s command and control mechanisms”. Kidwai said that the SPD and military had planned for “all contingencies”, including militant threats and any attempt by foreign forces to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.Referring to Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, against whom the army is conducting a major operation in South Waziristan, Kidwai said the militant leader “has a capability and we are prepared for it”.Kidwai emphasised that atomic bombs were “weapons of the last resort” and could hypothetically be used in hostilities with a country like India in the event of “space losses, severe force destruction or economic losses”.
