ISLAMABAD, 6 July 2006 — Pakistan has taken steps to beef up its nuclear safeguards and the parliamentary defense committees will monitor and review safety measures to ensure that the country’s nuclear arsenals remain in safe hands.
Sen. Nisar Memon, the chairman of the Senate’s House Committee on Defense, told Arab News that the issue of nuclear safeguards was discussed at the highest level and it was then proposed by the chairman of the National Assembly’s Defense Committee, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, that regular briefings on the country’s nuclear program and protection of nuclear arsenals should be held.
Thereafter it was decided that parliamentary committees would review the safety measures including the storage and protection of nuclear arsenals.
Memon said President Pervez Musharraf had also suggested that since defense matters were regularly reviewed and discussed by the house committees, nuclear program and related issues such as its development, storage and safeguards should also be discussed.
Memon said the aim of taking up the subject for discussion is to counter propaganda by international media that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals could end up in the hands of extremists.
He said allocations in the budget have also been made for the protection and maintenance of nuclear arsenals and the house defense committees are empowered to approve and utilize those. Until now the chief of the army staff who is also the president of Pakistan, he said, directly handled these subjects.
Pakistan had established a command and control system, which was regulated by the Pakistan Army, and the government had no say in that.
Nuclear scientists and civil engineers mostly manned two main nuclear establishments — Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and Kahuta Laboratories — and the army closely monitored their activities.
