Washington: With the Pakistani Army so penetrated by extremist elements, its nuclear asset of about 100 weapons is not safe, a leading Republican presidential candidate has said.
"My guess is Pakistan has well over 100 nuclear weapons. And that the Pakistani military is so penetrated by extremist elements you have no idea if one morning they`re going to lose three or four of them," Newt Gingrich, who is now leading among all Republican candidates according to latest polls, told the CNN in an interview. When asked why he thinks that the Pakistani military is not capable of protecting that nuclear arsenal, the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives said, "well, the Pakistani military was capable of protecting bin Laden for six years".
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked if he believed that Pakistan knew about the presence of Osama bin Laden, who lived in a safe house in Abbottabad before being killed by US Special Forces, Gingrich said, "It`s inconceivable that he (bin Laden) could have been in -- that was a national military city. "Their major military university is one mile from his compound. Now, do I think bin Laden was sitting a mile away from national military university and nobody noticed it in their intelligence service? It`s inconceivable," Gingrich argued.
PTI