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Pakistani authorities believe Taliban-linked militants are responsible for attacks that have
killed several thousand people in the country.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters. (VOA News)
US diplomatic cables released on Sunday show that since 2007 the United States has
been engaged in a secret effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani
research reactor. According to the documents released by a whistle-blowing website
called Wiki-Leaks, the US administration authorised this effort because American officials
feared the material could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
One cable quotes Saudi King Abdullah as saying that President Asif Ali Zardari was “the
greatest obstacle” to Pakistan’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects
the whole body”.
In May 2009, US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported to the State Department that
Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a
Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal they certainly
would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons”.
Cables sent by the US Embassy in Islamabad to the State Department also talk of “grave
fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons
programme” amid the country’s growing instability.
They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are
trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, and “assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver
in Lahore was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American
Consulate”.
Sayfa 78