US special unit steals atomic warheads

US special unit 'stands by to steal atomic warheads'
By Ben Fenton
(Filed: 29/10/2001)


AN elite American military unit is preparing for possible incursion into Pakistan in order to steal its nuclear weapons arsenal, it is reported today.

The special forces unit is training with Israel's most trusted anti-terrorist unit, and would be called into action in the event that Gen Pervaiz Musharraf lost power in Pakistan, the New Yorker magazine said.

The CIA believes that Pakistani army officers sympathetic to the Taliban could pose a threat to Gen Musharraf, and that some of the country's estimated 24 nuclear warheads could be stolen by renegades within Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI.

Seymour Hersch, a journalist whose reporting on the post-September 11 crisis has been broadly accurate so far, said that members of Israel's Unit 262, or Sayeret Matkal, came to America soon after the attacks and have been training with Pentagon special forces.

Mr Hersch quoted a "senior military officer" as confirming that intense planning was going on for the "exfiltration" - theft - of warheads. But there are doubts about whether the CIA - or any other intelligence agency - knows the exact location of Pakistan's warheads, which were first tested, to the surprise of American intelligence agencies, in 1998.

The fear that Gen Musharraf could lose control of the country and some or all of the warheads is based on the close links between the ISI and the Taliban. Last week, the Pakistani president dismissed such concerns.

"We have an excellent command-and-control system which we have evolved, and there is no question of their falling into the hands of any fundamentalists," Gen Musharraf said. Pakistan is thought to have a number of intermediate-range missiles to carry its warheads as well as using F-16 fighter-bombers.

There are a number of possible targets for the use of these weapons by renegades sympathetic to the Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. These include India, itself a nuclear power, or the four American aircraft carriers and British vessels currently cruising off Pakistan's coastline as bases for air and commando attacks on the Taliban and al-Qa'eda.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2001. Terms & Conditions of reading.
Commercial information. Privacy Policy.