Pakistan needs to recognize the seriousness of the threat posed by terrorists who want to acquire nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today during a trip to Islamabad (see GSN, Oct. 23).
Clinton said the Obama administration had a “high degree of confidence” that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were secure, Agence France-Presse reported.
Still, “we know al-Qaeda and their related extremist allies are always on the hunt for nuclear material and it doesn’t have to be a lot to create a very damaging explosion with extraordinary psychological and political ramifications,” Clinton said. “Now that we see that the Pakistani military recognizes the threat posed, we want them to also imagine what that threat would be with a nuclear weaponized terrorist group in their midst.”
U.S. officials also “worry about proliferation and we have a good reason to worry about proliferation,” Clinton said in an apparent reference to former top Pakistani nuclear scientist and proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan. Washington still considers Khan to be a proliferation threat (see GSN, Aug. 28).
“We want to encourage Pakistan to join with us in the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] review conference that will be held next spring,” Clinton said to reporters (see GSN, Oct. 22).
Pakistan has yet to sign the treaty, along with nuclear-armed states India, Israel and North Korea.
Washington also wants Islamabad to support creation of a fissile material cutoff treaty, Clinton said. “We want them to really understand how serious a threat we face” (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Oct. 28).
“It’s not just about what might happen in our country or in Europe. It’s what could happen in Pakistan and what the impact of that would be,” she said (Asian News International/Thaindian News, Oct. 28).
Clinton is the highest-ranking U.S. official to travel to Pakistan since it was made the center of the struggle against al-Qaeda by President Barack Obama, AFP reported.
“We are turning a page on what has been in the last several years primarily a security antiterrorist agenda,” Clinton said. “[Afghanistan] remains a very high priority. But we also recognize that it’s imperative that we broaden our engagement with Pakistan” (Christophe Schmidt, Agence France-Presse II/Google News, Oct. 28).
