LONDON, Dec 1: The husband-and-wife team of journalists which had made sensational disclosures about Pakistan’s nuclear journey, focusing mainly on the so-called clandestine network of Dr A.Q. Khan, has now come out with an even more sensational disclosure that the Bush administration has been war-gaming scenarios to secure or capture Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

According to a scary piece in the Guardian on Saturday by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, President Bush has been advised by a senior administration adviser to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos.

The story, headlined “Bush handed blueprint to seize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal”, reported that in a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan, a former West Point military historian and one of the main authors of the surge strategy in Iraq, has called for the White House to consider various options if Pakistan became unstable.

These include: sending elite British or US troops to secure nuclear weapons capable of being transported out of the country and take them to a secret storage depot in New Mexico or a “remote redoubt” inside Pakistan; sending US troops to Pakistan’s north-western border to fight the Taliban and Al Qaida; and a US occupation of Islamabad, and the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan if asked for assistance by a Pakistan military, so that the US could shore up President Pervez Musharraf and General Ashfaq Kayani.

FOREIGN OFFICE: A Foreign Office spokesman in Islamabad said: “Pakistan rejects the conjecture that there is any danger of our strategic assets falling in wrong hands.