Nuclear surrender?

IF the Boston Globe report is any way close to the truth, Pakistani officials are in talks with the US about its demand to fly the stock of highly enriched uranium Islamabad possesses to the US, to be disposed of there. That demand is based on the Americans' consuming fear that the dangerous stuff could fall into the hands of militants, who are, they believe, knocking at the door of Islamabad and would like to use it against the US on gaining control of the reins of government in Pakistan. The newspaper cites two unnamed Administration officials with direct knowledge of the discussions to secure Pakistani weapons. Another story on a survey underlines that 87 percent of Americans are "somewhat concerned" and 60 percent "very concerned" about the security of these weapons. President Obama's National Security Advisor General James Jones has told BBC that though he has been assured by Pakistan Army about the safety of nuclear weapons, Washington needed further guarantees since "the world would like to know...that there's absolute security and transparency."
Much to the surprise of the Pakistani nation, which would under no circumstances countenance any compromise on the nuclear assets so vital to our survival in the hostile climate we live in, the Boston Globe reports that officials from Islamabad have shed their secretiveness about the programme and are willing to cooperate. They feel that they have a reason to do so in the face of the threatening inroads of the militants, the report adds. That, if true, is indeed a serious matter. There is no reason for us to open up on this highly sensitive issue before any foreign power and no one should ever be allowed to even discuss the possibility of our surrendering the most potent weapon of security. The US, which spared no stratagem it could think of to scuttle Pakistan's nuclear programme while it was under way, finds it hard to stomach the reality that it tested the weapon successfully as a tit-for-tat to India. Islamabad rightly ignored Washington's pressure to demonstrate that it possessed adequate deterrence, and it proved the deterrence value by warding off the possibility of an Indian attack when it had kept amassed troops on Pakistan's international borders for 10 months in 2002. Strange for an exponent of non-proliferation to have gone out of the way to offer New Delhi the forbidden nuclear technology, calling it "civilian", that would undoubtedly help strengthen its arsenal.