Security conference focuses on Pakistan nuclear capabilities

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HALIFAX — The Afghan war and the growing Taliban insurgency inside Pakistan are putting that country's nuclear arsenal at risk, says Stephen Hadley, an arms control expert who served as national security adviser to former U.S. president George W. Bush.

"The situation in Pakistan is troubling from a lot of perspectives," Hadley said. "There is a lot of concern about what happens to Pakistan's nuclear weapons if the government fragments in some way."

Hadley, who now advises the United States Institute of Peace — a Washington-based think-tank — was speaking in Halifax Sunday at an international security conference, where the worsening insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan were the focus of three days of talks by defence ministers, academics and military leaders from the Americas, Asia and Europe.

The consensus at the conference was that Pakistan is the key to solving the war in Afghanistan because the Pakistan military established the Taliban and brought them to power as a proxy government in Kabul following the Soviet withdrawal.

As the Taliban have reasserted their strength in Afghanistan in recent years, however, so too have they and other Pashtun extremist groups begun to destabilize Pakistan, working from the same safe havens near the Afghan frontier.

Hadley said there was concern inside the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of 2001, that U.S.-led military action inside Afghanistan might destabilize Pakistan and could even lead to a Taliban government in Islamabad.

So far that hasn't happened, and as a result, Pakistan's nuclear weapons remain firmly in the control of the established civilian government, Hadley said, adding that the U.S. has assisted Pakistan since 9/11 in maintaining legitimate command and control efforts over its arsenal.

"Whenever we checked in with our military and intelligence people, we said, 'Is this a nuclear arsenal at risk?' The answer so far has always been, 'No,'" Hadley said.

"And we have now a democratic government in Pakistan that is really revitalizing their effort against the Taliban. They see it now for what it is — a strategic threat to the stability of that democracy.

"So I think that's a problem that we have done pretty well in managing, all of us together, in the last eight years."

Yet it remains "a risk" that circumstances could rapidly change, he said.

Ellen Tauscher, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control in the Obama administration, also attended the conference on Sunday, but declined to comment on questions about Pakistan's nuclear weapons.