Author: PTI
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 4, 2009
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Pak-N-weapons-face-threat-from-insiders-Former-CIA-official/articleshow/4737126.cms
Pakistan's atomic weapons face the threat
from insiders in the nuclear establishment colluding with outsiders, as authorities
there have "a dismal track record" in thwarting such dangers, a
former top American intelligence official has warned.
"The greatest threat of a loose nuke
scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders,
people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb", said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen,
who served as a CIA officer for 23 years.
"Nowhere in the world is this threat
greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record
in thwarting insider threats," Mowatt-Larssen said in the July/August
issue of Arms Control Today, published by the Arms Control Association.
He underlined that the network run by the
father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, channeled sensitive nuclear
technologies to Iran, Libya, and North Korea for years under the noses of
the establishment before it was taken down in 2003, to the best of our knowledge.
The Umma-Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), founded by Pakistani
nuclear scientists with close ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban, was headed
by Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who had been in charge of Pakistan's Khushab
reactor.
"It is stunning to consider that two
of the founding fathers of Pakistan's weapons programme embarked independently
on clandestine efforts to organize networks to sell their country's most precious
secrets for profit," Mowatt-Larssen stressed.
