WASHINGTON: Pakistan is not using US military assistance to expand its nuclear arsenal, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on Monday.
“I am not aware of any US aid that’’s gone towards nuclear weapons,” Mullen told a gathering at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank.
He said that the one exception was a portion of US funds in the past few years focused on “improving” security safeguards for Pakistan’’s nuclear weapons, “which is exactly what we like.”
Last week Mullen confirmed that Pakistan was seeking to bolster its nuclear arsenal but he avoided further comment on the subject at Monday’’s event.
At a congressional hearing on Friday, Senator Jim Webb asked the top ranking military officer if he had evidence that Pakistan was developing new nuclear weapons systems and warheads. “Yes,” Mullen replied, without elaborating.
Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, said Pakistan’’s moves were cause for “enormous concern” and yet were receiving less public attention than Iran’’s nuclear program.
“We”re spending a lot of time talking about the potential that Iran might have nuclear weapon capability and this is a regime that’’s far less stable and that should be a part of our debate,” Webb said at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Webb and other members of Congress have questioned if billions in US military aid has been spent as intended by the Pakistani government.
On Monday, Mullen reiterated that he was encouraged with the Pakistan military’’s recent offensive against the Taliban in the northwest but he said the bigger question was whether Islamabad would keep up the pressure on the Islamists in the longer term.
“They need to sustain it. They need to provide sustained security for their people,” Mullen said.
He played down suggestions that the threat posed by the Taliban meant the Pakistani state was near collapse. “I don”t believe they are a country near failure,” he said.
Source:Pakistan not misappropriating US funds, says Mullen
