(CNSNews.com) – Recent terrorist successes in Pakistan, including the weekend attack on national army headquarters, have raised fresh fears about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal, although both the U.S. and British governments are playing down the concerns.
 
Militants attacked the Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi near Islamabad, seized hostages and held off troops for almost 20 hours before a commando operation brought the standoff to an end. Eight of the attackers were killed, along with at least eight military personnel, two of them senior officers.

On Monday, the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said it would activate militant cells across the country for more attacks. Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq called The Associated Press and said the attack was only the first in a planned wave of strikes intended to avenge the killing of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in a CIA missile strike in August.
 
"This was our first small effort and a present to the Pakistani and American governments," he said.
 
Contradictory reports during the episode reflected the confusion and uncertainty, but it appeared that a group of gunmen succeeded in entering through one gate after soldiers left it unguarded to respond to an assault by a second group of attackers at another gate.

The brazen attack on Pakistan’s equivalent of the Pentagon, and the fact that the terrorists wore army uniforms, has raised new questions about the level of security in place at sensitive installations, and about possible militant infiltration of the armed forces.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meeting with her British counterpart David Miliband in London on Sunday, acknowledged that “extremists … are increasingly threatening the authority of the [Pakistani] state,” but said the U.S. government saw “no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”
 
But she said the U.S. had “confidence in the Pakistani government and military’s control over nuclear weapons.”
 
Miliband also spoke grimly about “the nature of the insurgency that threatens the Pakistani people,” but said talk about nuclear insecurity was “alarmist.”
 
“There is no evidence that has been shown publicly or privately of any threat to the Pakistani nuclear facilities,” he added.
 
Estimates of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal vary widely, with the Carnegie Endowment estimating 60 warheads.
 
In late 2007, the head of the military’s sensitive Strategic Planning Division (SPD), retired Lt.-Gen. Khalid Kidwai, gave a rare media presentation on the security measures in place at the country’s nuclear installations.
 
He said the sites were equipped with outer perimeter high security walls and cameras and biometric access controls, and guarded by up to 10,000 nuclear security troops, including staff who report directly to Pakistan’s intelligence services.

Nonetheless, the relative ease with which the terrorists mounted their offensive in the heart of Pakistan’s military center – in Punjab province, away from the frontier areas where the military has been battling the Taliban – points to a serious security and intelligence breakdown.
 
Just a week ago, Pakistani newspapers published a leaked letter from Punjab police to intelligence agencies, warning about the possibility of an attack on army headquarters by terrorists dressed in military fatigues.
 
The attack in Rawalpindi came less than a week after a suicide bomber – again dressed in military uniform – walked into the supposedly secured U.N. World Food Program offices in Islamabad and detonated his charge, killing five WFP employees.
 
The black uniform worn by the bomber was that of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force whose members are almost exclusively recruited from Pashtun tribes. Some have been suspected of sympathizing with fellow Pashtuns in the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), Pakistan’s umbrella Taliban movement.
 
Pakistani newspapers last week quoted unnamed investigating officials as saying they had not ruled out the possibility that the attacker was not simply wearing stolen or borrowed Frontier Corps uniform but that he was himself a serving or former member.
 
Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who is in charge of internal security, denied on Pakistani television Sunday night that the Rawalpindi attack was the result of a security lapse, saying armed forces had been on high alert.
 
Malik said the military would soon mount a long-planned major offensive against terrorists in South Waziristan, the southernmost part of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas which border Afghanistan. Over the summer the military defeated militant forces in the Swat valley in the North-West Frontier Province.