Islamabad | Sunday
OSAMA bin Laden, the Taliban and the atomic bomb — a ”doomsday scenario” that terrorist experts warn can no longer be simply rejected as alarmist fantasy.
Two hypotheses have been put forward for the possible use of the ultimate terrorist weapon by Islamic extremists.
One involves the acquisition of a nuclear weapon from Pakistan in the event of any major destabilisation in Afghanistan’s nuclear-capable neighbour, while the other envisages the manufacture of a bomb in Afghanistan itself.
The first scenario has already seen three countries move to dismiss concerns over a New Yorker magazine report that an elite US military unit was training with Israeli commandos to take out Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in case President Pervez Musharraf is overthrown.
”I am confident that he (Musharraf) understands the importance of ensuring that all elements of his nuclear programme are safe and secure,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week.
Pakistan entered the club of nuclear powers when it conducted a series of underground tests in May 1998 in response to similar tests carried out by arch-rival India.
But even New Delhi, which rarely misses any opportunity to take a swipe at Islamabad, ruled out any looting of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
”Politics apart, I must give them (Pakistanis) credit that they are responsible people and will not allow people to walk away with nuclear weapons,” said Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes.
And Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar insisted that ”any apprehension” that the country’s nuclear assets could fall into the hands of extremists was ”entirely imaginary.”
But the report in the New Yorker had quoted unnamed US experts as saying they doubted Musharraf’s ability to control the military and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event of a coup.
And the experts said they feared that dissident fundamentalists within the Pakistani military — upset by Musharraf’s cooperation with the US-led war on terrorism now targeting Afghanistan – might try to seize a nuclear warhead.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Friday that Pakistan’s nuclear facilities remained secure as the long as the government was in control.
”If there were a breakdown in the civil order of course you have worries. But so far I think they are under proper control,” ElBaradei said.
The second scenario — the manufacture of a nuclear weapon inside Afghanistan — was given some credence by the Pakistani authorities last month when they detained a former nuclear scientist for questioning over links between his charity group and the Taliban.
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a former project director for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, was later released after a senior government official said investigations had showed his organisation had been engaged in ”purely humanitarian work” in Afghanistan.
”There is no reason to cause any concern or doubts about the nuclear aspects,” the official said.
But several terrorist experts who addressed a special one-day conference at the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters on Friday said the threat of bin Laden acquiring a nuclear weapons could not be dismissed.
”There is evidence that bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organisation has been … seeking to purchase stolen nuclear material from the Soviet Union for use in nuclear explosives,” said George Bunn of Stanford University.
IAEA chief El Baradei described the possibility of terrorists building a nuclear bomb as ”unlikely,” but declined to rule it out.
”That is obviously the most horrific scenario but in our judgement the most unlikely scenario,” he said, but added: ”Nothing is excluded … We need to take account of that possibility.”
The IAEA head said he had no information about al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear bomb-making material, although he remained worried. ”We are concerned about al-Qaeda as well as any other terrorist organisation,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.
For their part, the Taliban have scoffed at the proposed doomsday scenarios.
”A country which does not even have facilities to manufacture a glass must not be expected to have sophisticated items like nuclear weapons,” said Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef.- Sapa-AFP
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Shattered World: A Daily Mail & Guardian special on the attack on the US
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