Pakistan Says Nuclear Site "Safe in our Hands"

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From the new World Media Watch up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
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//The Daily Times, Pakistan Sunday, July 30, 2006

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\07\30\story_30-7-2006_pg7_5



PAKISTAN SAYS NUCLEAR SITE ‘SAFE IN OUR HANDS’



KUALA LUMPUR: Foreign Minister Khurshid Ahmad Kasuri said on Friday that a powerful new nuclear reactor under construction was “safe in our hands” and would not spark an arms race with rival India.

“It’s nothing new, the world knows about it, the world knows that it’s safe in our hands,” Kasuri told AFP in an interview late Friday at a meeting of Asia’s top security forum in Kuala Lumpur. “It’s five years old, it’s nearing completion now, I don’t know the timing,” he added. The United States has urged Islamabad not to use the reactor at the Khushab nuclear complex to bolster it’s atomic weapons capability.

International observers reacted with alarm after the Washington Post on Monday reported the reactor’s existence, citing the US-based International Institute for Science and International Security.

The group that said satellite photographs showed the heavy water reactor could produce more than 200 kilogrammes of weapons-grade plutonium a year – enough to make 40-50 nuclear weapons every year.

Pakistan remains at the heart of an investigation into a nuclear black-market headed by its disgraced chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed in 2004 to passing atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Kasuri, speaking at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, did not specify whether or not the new nuclear plant would be used to produce nuclear weapons.

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