Over the last six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified programme to help Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, 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.

The US paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan. A raft of equipment was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material. However, Pakistan has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used.
Pakistan has also been suspicious that any American-made technology could include a secret “kill switch”, enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.

In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. Their confidence stems from two separate intelligence assessments issued this month  which concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was safe under current conditions.

Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to provide access has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced — including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Now that concern about Musharraf’s ability to remain in power has been rekindled, so has the debate about how much the programme accomplished, and what it left unaccomplished.

N-switch

In the past, officials say, the United States has shared ideas — but not technologies — about how to make the safeguards that lie at the heart of American weapons security. The system hinges on what is essentially a switch in the firing circuit that requires the would-be user to enter a numeric code that starts a timer for the weapon’s arming and detonation.

Most switches disable themselves if the sequence of numbers entered turns out to be incorrect in a fixed number of tries, much like a bank ATM does. In some cases, the disabled link sets off a small explosion in the warhead to render it useless. Delicate design details involve how to bury the link deep inside a weapon to keep terrorists or enemies from disabling the safeguard.

John E McLaughlin, a CIA deputy director, said: “I am confident of two things. That the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”