We’re moderate, but may use nuke arms, Musharraf tells CBS

“God has ordered us to make nuclear weapons,” Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a flaming fundamentalist associated with the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba told 60 Minutes.

Describing Pakistan as `dead broke’ and a country `coming apart at the seams,’ CBS confronted Musharraf with questions about the country’s nuclear weapons programme and its level of security.

Musharraf said he was proud of the nuclear weapons `for Pakistan’s sake’ and hoped he would never have to use them, unless Pakistan’s future is threatened.

The General also contested the scenario CBS painted of an institutional collapse in Pakistan that would put the weapons in the hands of mullahs.“I don’t think that is going to take place,” Musharraf said mildly. `Pakistan is a moderate Islamic country.’

Musharraf also said the nuclear wespons are secure under the nation’s command and control authority and insisted, `Pakistan is not a banana republic.’

US experts said Pakistan’s nuclear programme has gone `much further along’ than Washington acknowledges and said the country had 25 to 35 bombs enough to fight a major nuclear war. They believe many military officers in Musharraf’s army are sympathetic to the "militants", and if the general tries to crack down against Islamic leaders, he may be overthrown.

CBS pictures showed a country in turmoil with rabid mullahs presiding over madrassas teeming with young radicals. The premise of the segment, titled `Is Pakistan America’s worst nightmare?’ was that nukes could very much fall into the hands of the Islamic radicals.

`That’s very possible,’ the programme quoted Anthony Zinni, the commander of the Central Command which has strategic oversight over Pakistan, as saying. But Zinni, described in some quarters as America’s pro-consul to Pakistan and the badlands to its West, also suggested Musharraf could be the country’s last hope.

"We could have fundamentalists and another fundamentalist state that looks like Iran. That could be dangerous for obvious reasons. Or, we could have complete chaos and something that looks like Afghanistan," Zinni said.

While the CBS programme reflected a broad consensus emerging among analysts and experts that Pakistan may be on the verge of a collapse the subject of many such articles in the media some of them said the feeding frenzy on the subject suited Islamabad’s survival strategy.

“By constantly invoking the spectre of a nuclear state collapsing, they remain the focus of attention and try to sustain themselves,” said Kanti Bajpai, a JNU scholar currently on sabbatical at Washington’s Brookings Institute.

But the CBS insight was clearly seen as more bad news for a demoralised country that has entered into frenzied breast-beating lately. The Pakistani media is full of bleak commentary on the future of the country, enough for General Musharraf to talk of a conspiracy to dishearten the populace and order they be spirited and patriotic.

The Western media, which initially seemed willing to give the military government a chance to put Pakistan back on the rails, has also panned Musharraf on his government’s first anniversary.

Under headlines such as `Musharraf Fails the Test’ and `The Useless Dictator,’ magazines like The Economist blamed him for Pakistan going down the tubes even further.

Calling Pakistan a `nuclear-armed basket case,’ The Economist said if the scope of General Musharraf’s shortcomings had been confined to Pakistan’s domestic woes, the world might merely have sighed and looked away. But Pakistan was destabilising the whole region.

“The army in Pakistan, as was once observed about psychiatrists, is the problem to which it pretends to be the solution,” The Economist said in one commentary.

While the CBS footage showed a calm and confident Musharraf, the network also said US officials believe many military officers in his army are sympathetic to the "militants", and if the general tries to crack down against Islamic leaders, he may be overthrown.

“If any government tries to close us down it will collapse,” it quoted one Islamic radical leader as saying. Another claimed the army rank and file was with them.