THOSE PAKISTANI NUKES - AT 7:38 A.M. ET:  Readers know that we've been covering this rather closely.  Pakistan has operational nuclear weapons, and the country is increasingly unstable.  Last week, at his news conference, President Obama gave a bland, and, I thought, somewhat irresponsible assurance that the weapons were secure.  David Sanger, in an excellent New York Times piece, says, in effect, "not so fast, Barack."

WASHINGTON — As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.

COMMENT:  Pakistan's record of accuracy in giving assurances about the security of its nuclear program is poor, and President Obama has got to face that fact.  Pakistan assured us repeatedly that the father of its nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, wasn't selling nuclear technology on the black market.  That assurance turned out to be patently false.

We've said before that Pakistan could turn out to be the story of the year.  Nothing in that assessment has changed.

May 4, 2009