North Korea received designs for uranium enrichment centrifuges from Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan in return for its long-range missiles, a Congressional report has told US lawmakers.
“Hwang Jang-yop, a Communist Party secretary who defected in 1997, has stated that North Korea and Pakistan agreed in the summer of 1996 to trade North Korean [...]

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China is providing assistance to Pakistan in developing its plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme, a Congressional report has
told US lawmakers.
Besides the conventional uranium-based nuclear weapons, said Pakistan has also pursued plutonium-based warheads since the 1990s and continues to produce plutonium for weapons, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in latest its report on the country’s [...]

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Even then, the big question was, who did they get the solid fuel manufacturing technology from? There are many potential vendors (North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, China, or even stolen from the West). The Ashura test failure last year involved some problem with the second stage, not with the solid fuel rocket motors. Iran has been [...]

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Urged by a senior al-Qaeda ideologue to take over Pakistan, members of jihadi internet forums have begun to examine the possibility of controlling Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (al-faloja1.com, April 24). At the same time, jihadis continue to collect information on nuclear facilities around the globe, especially Israel’s nuclear projects, waiting for an opportunity to perpetrate successful [...]

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In a potential nuclear conflict, fallout could contaminate fisheries and poison food supplies, according to formerly classified British military documents.
Although the threat of global nuclear warfare has declined since the end of the Cold War, there is no reason, said science historians, that a regional conflict between countries such as India and Pakistan might not [...]

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Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.
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Why you should worry about Pakistan’s nukes
Well, just when you thought [...]

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Influential American commentators and media outlets are now starting to question what they see as Washington’s indirect bankrolling of Pakistan’s nuclear program through massive infusion of aid, even as US President Obama
is insisting that he is confident Islamabad won’t allow its nuclear assets to fall into extremist hands.
Read More…

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Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had warned US president Barack Obama that Pakistan’s nuclear sites in North West Frontier Province areas that are Taliban-al Qaeda strongholds are already partly in the hands of Islamic extremists. He told Obama: “Pakistan is lost.”
Read More at DEBKAfile…

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Cause for Concern
ABC News - ?18 hours ago?
International concerns are [...]

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… Pakistan is building two of the developing world’s largest plutonium production reactors, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country’s nuclear arsenal, now estimated at 60 to 80 weapons.
What makes the project even more threatening is that it is unique.
Read More…

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While by no means a phony war, DEBKAfile’s military sources report that accounts of a major Pakistan military offensive launched to flush Taliban out of their strongholds in the northern Swat Valley are generally inflated. This is not to say that hundreds of thousands of civilians are not fleeing the valley. Some half a million [...]

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Pakistanis must act to save their country. But Washington also must help safeguard its nuclear arsenal.
Yet in the last week alone, the Taliban has blown up a Pakistani school, kidnapped a dozen soldiers and beheaded at least two of them, and stormed and occupied government buildings, causing thousands of residents to flee. By one estimate, [...]

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Bruce O. Riedel, a retired CIA expert on South Asia, who chaired a special interagency committee to develop President Obama’s policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, says “the situation remains dire” in the region, and particularly in Pakistan. He says “there is a real possibility of a jihadist state emerging in Pakistan sometime in the future. [...]

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Russia (20 percent): Unrest rises as unemployment soars as disposable income plummets. Politics takes an authoritarian turn as hardliners push out liberals, prompting more autarchic economic policy and an increasingly confrontational and unpredictable foreign policy.
Mexico (10 percent): Corruption involving a senior Cabinet minister or member of President Felipe Calderon’s inner circle taking bribes from drug [...]

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Thousands of Pakistani troops were massing for an assault on Taleban positions 65 miles from the country’s capital last night after giving the insurgents 24 hours to withdraw from their advanced positions or face attack.
The threat of force follows a stern warning from American policymakers that Islamabad was doing too little to stem a growing [...]

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Taliban militants have established control of a strategically important area only 70 miles from the capital, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. The move is part of an unrelenting push by the Taliban toward the heart of Pakistan.
Heavily armed militants were patrolling villages and local police had retreated to their station houses in much of the [...]

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Back in January the Joint Military Command warned that Mexico and Pakistan were in danger of rapid and sudden collapse
In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico,” says the study - Joint Operating Environment [...]

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The United States is paying increasing attention to Pakistan in its bid to bring stability to Afghanistan, amid fears that the nuclear state could collapse. Rival Islamic militant groups are joining forces to make their country into a stronghold — and are receiving support from Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency. By Susanne Koelbl and Britta Sandberg [...]

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The financial crisis that has spanned the globe has had an especially strong impact in countries beset by political uncertainty. Analysts say weak governments saddled with poorly performing economies are more vulnerable to social unrest and armed insurgency.
According to analysts, Pakistan is one of the most prominent examples of a nation where economic pressures [...]

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In the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the CIA inside Pakistan, launching attacks against a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.
The two missile strikes on training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud represent a broadening of the U.S. campaign inside Pakistan, which has been largely carried [...]

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