NEW YORK, Nov 11: President Pervez Musharraf ordered an emergency redeployment of the country’s nuclear arsenal to at least six secret new locations and has reorganized military oversight of the nuclear forces in the weeks since Pakistan joined the US campaign against terrorism, the Washington Post said quoting senior officials in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s military began relocating critical nuclear weapons components within two days of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, fearful of possible strikes against the country’s nuclear facilities, military officials said.

Another reason for the movement, officials added, was to remove them from air bases and corridors that might be used by the United States in an attack on Afghanistan, the Post said.

President Musharraf also created a new Strategic Planning Division within the nuclear programme, headed by a three-star general to oversee operations.

This decision, not previously disclosed, was part of the shuffle of top military and intelligence leaders just hours before the US bombing of Afghanistan began on Oct 7.

The shake-up was designed to sideline officers considered too sympathetic to the Taliban or other extremist religious factions, officials said.

Gen Musharraf’s move was to help keep control of the nuclear programme out of the hands of religious hard-liners in the military if he was assassinated or ousted from office, officials said.

On Saturday at a press conference Gen Musharraf responding to the Dawn report about Osama bin Laden’s claim that he has nuclear weapons said: “I can’t imagine him acquiring nuclear weapons.”

“Nukes everywhere are susceptible to hijacking,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physics professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University and one of the few vocal anti-nuclear activists in Pakistan. “There are special dangers here.”

Although Pakistan’s nuclear programme remains one of the world’s most secretive, the country is believed to have the materials to assemble between 30 and 40 warheads and has test- fired intermediate-range missiles that potentially could be used to launch them, according to intelligence reports and nuclear experts. Both Pakistan and India tested underground nuclear devices in 1998, and the two countries are viewed by many security experts as the globe’s most worrisome nuclear flashpoint.

An escalation of attacks across the Kashmir border just over two years ago underscored the dangers between the distrustful neighbours.

Pakistani fears of an Indian attack on its nuclear sites were so great in the summer of 1999, after guerrillas invaded Indian territory, that military officers here secretly contacted Taliban officials about the possibility of moving some nuclear assets west to neighbouring Afghanistan for safekeeping, according to a recently retired Pakistani general familiar with the talks, the Post said.