Nowhere in the leaked cables was it implied that US was trying to “steal” Pakistan’s nukes.
KARACHI: Ambassador Hilaly’s article on WikiLeaks was good except the following sentence: “What is intolerable, however, was the manner the US sought to allay its concerns — by stealing.” This is exactly the kind of hyper-paranoid fabrication on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme that surface often in the media. The attempt to remove the nuclear material was part of a deal signed in 2007 between Pakistan and the US to remove it from a reactor. The material in question could not have been used to make a nuclear bomb but possibly a so-called ‘dirty’ bomb. An American team was supposed to visit in 2009 to remove the material but the visit was delayed because the government feared adverse public reaction. Nowhere in the leaked cables was it implied that US was trying to “steal” Pakistan’s nukes.
Iftikhar Zaidi
Published in The Express Tribune, December 3rd, 2010.
