Pakistan's growing pile of nuclear weapons a 'global threat'

Scotland/ Paris, February 21: The American intelligence assessments reveal that Pakistan will overtake Britain as the world's fifth largest nuclear weapons power soon. A restive South Asian state, it has doubled its nuclear weapons stockpile over the past several years, increasing its arsenal to more than 100 deployed weapons. The danger is that this expansion is happening at a time of great internal turmoil in the country and the rise of religious extremism. Think tanks believe that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is in danger of being captured at some point by Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, who have been attempting to procure nuclear material and recruit scientists in order to build a 'dirty bomb'.