The Taliban have no plans to attack the country’s nuclear arsenal, its spokesman declared on Thursday, according to a report carried by the Wall Street Journal.
However, the militants kept up their campaign to avenge Osama bin Laden’s death with a blatant attack in Hangu that killed 30 people.
A Taliban attack earlier this week on PNS Mehran base in Karachi renewed fears that the country’s sizable nuclear arsenal could be vulnerable. But Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan dismissed those concerns as America’s “excuse” to pressure Pakistan’s government into fighting the Taliban, who he portrayed as the country’s true protectors, the report said.
“Pakistan is the only Muslim nuclear-power state,” Ehsan said in a telephone interview with WSJ, adding that the Taliban had no intention of changing that fact. He then mocked Pakistan’s willingness to work with the US, saying, “Isn’t it a shame for us to have the Islamic bomb, and even then we are bowing down to the pressures of America?”
While the brutality of the Taliban has alienated them from most of the country’s people, Ehsan’s anti-American sentiments are still shared by many, the report added.
The long-questioned alliance with the US has come under increased scrutiny following the raid this month that killed Osama bin Laden. The raid was seen by a majority as a violation of national sovereignty by an “unfaithful ally”.
“Ehsan’s remarks appeared tailored to appeal to that increasingly nationalist mainstream, where conspiracy theories flourish about American, Indian and Israeli plots to deprive Pakistan of its atomic arsenal. Pakistan’s nuclear capability is cherished here as the guarantor of safety from India’s far larger conventional military,” the report said.
