Pakistan has deployed over 100 nuclear weapons, doubling its stockpile in the past several years and overtaking India, the Washington Post said in a front-page report on Monday.
The report said that just four years back the size of the Pakistani arsenal was estimated at between 30 to 60 weapons.
The report, citing experts, said: “The Pakistanis have significantly accelerated production of uranium and plutonium for bombs and developed new weapons to deliver them. After years of approximate weapons parity, Pakistan has now edged ahead of India.”
Brig. Nazir Butt, defence attaché at Pakistan’s embassy in Washington, neither confirmed nor denied the Post dispatch, saying the number of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the status of its production facilities were confidential. The newspaper quoted him as saying: “Pakistan lives in a tough neighbourhood and will never be oblivious to its security needs.”
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, was quoted as saying: “They (the Pakistanis) have been expanding pretty rapidly.” He said that based on recently accelerated production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, Pakistan may now have an arsenal of up to 110 weapons. India is estimated to have 60 to 100 weapons.
“It’s hard to say how much the US knows,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists. Mr Kristensen, author of the annual global nuclear weapons inventory published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, said: “Probably a fair amount. But it’s a mixed bag — Pakistan is an ally, and they can’t undercut it with a statement of concern in public.”
But the Post said the US government’s determination to bring the fissile material ban to completion this year may compel it to directly confront proliferation issues in South Asia.