Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was at risk of being seized by “extremists” who had probably infiltrated Islamabad’s military. “My guess is that they have well over 100 nuclear weapons and that the Pakistani military is so penetrated by extremist elements you have no idea if one morning, they are going to lose three or four of them. I mean just have them stolen,” Gingrich told CNN’s Situation Room programme. Gingrich, a veteran Republican who has surged in recent weeks to the top of the pack of contenders vying to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama, also derided Pakistan’s claims that officials did not know Osama bin Laden had been hiding there for years before elite US forces found and killed him in May.
“The Pakistani military was capable of protecting bin Laden for six years,” in Abbottabad, Gingrich said.
