ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's new prime minister, Zafarullah Khan Jamali, has begun his tenure with renewed promises that the country's nuclear weapons will remain in safe hands.
Under different circumstances, the prime minister's words would have been considered merely routine in view of the country's status as a new nuclear power. In the past few weeks, though, a spate of allegations -- appearing mainly in the U.S. press -- that Islamabad supplied nuclear knowhow to Pyongyang in exchange for missile technology have renewed global concern over Pakistan's status as a nuclear power.
Since Pakistan conducted maiden nuclear tests in 1998, successive governments have time and again sought to placate worldwide concerns over the possibility of nuclear materials and related scientific knowledge slipping out of government control by routinely restating official policy to try to convince the international community that the country remains committed to the principles of nonproliferation even though security imperatives forced it to acquire nuclear-weapons technology.