NEW YORK, Nov 18: Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified programme to help Pakistan secure its nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

Quoting current and former senior US officials, the newspaper says that Washington launched a comprehensive plan to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons soon after 9/11.

Under this programme, Washington paid for training Pakistani personnel in the United States in nuclear security.

The United States is also financing the construction of a nuclear security training centre in Pakistan, which is still under-construction although it was supposed to be operational this year.

The US government also provided a raft of equipment to Pakistan for this purpose, from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment.

Some of these are used to secure nuclear material and warheads while others are for protecting nuclear laboratories.

The report, however, points out that the cooperation for nuclear protection also suffered from mutual suspicions.

At one stage, the Bush administration debated whether it could share with Pakistan one of the crown jewels of American nuclear protection technology, known as “permissive action links”, or PALS.

This system is used to keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorisations.

The US government, however, decided that it could not share the system with the Pakistanis because of legal restrictions.

The Pakistanis, on the other hand, were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch”, enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.