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U.S. Helps Pakistan Protect Nuclear Arsenal

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By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times

Published: November 18, 2007

WASHINGTON - During the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million so far on a highly classified program to help Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf secure his country's nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.

But with the future of that country's leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan's reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that U.S. officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.

A raft of equipment was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age.

While U.S. officials say they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show U.S. officials how or where the gear is actually used.

Some administration officials have feared that sharing the technology would teach Pakistan too much about American weaponry. The same concern kept the Clinton administration from sharing the technology with China in the early 1990s.

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