'Junta with nukes': NSA files show Bush, Putin were worried about Pak's arsenal

Newly declassified documents reveal that former US president George W Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin shared anxieties regarding the stability of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, with Putin bluntly characterising the nation as a “junta with nuclear weapons” and Bush predicting that China would eventually become a significant threat to Russian interests.

- HT Correspondent

The memorandums of conversation, released this week by the National Security Archive, offer a verbatim look at private exchanges between the two leaders from 2001 to 2008. While much of the public focus at the time was on the war on terror, the transcripts show that concerns over the proliferation network of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan and the opacity of Islamabad’s military leadership were recurring sources of tension in the Oval Office.

In a September 16, 2005, meeting, the two leaders expressed mutual alarm regarding evidence that nuclear technology had transferred from Pakistan to Iran.

“It was of Pakistani origin. That makes me nervous,” Putin told Bush, referring to uranium traces discovered in Iranian centrifuges.

“It makes us nervous, too,” Bush replied.

The documents highlight the diplomatic tightrope the US walked with Pakistan, a key ally, despite harbouring doubts about the transparency of its military ruler, Pervez Musharraf. Bush vented frustration regarding the AQ Khan proliferation network, which had been exposed for selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.