India is vulnerable to its nuclear material being targeted by terrorists but this danger is no higher than faced by many other countries including the United States, a senior Bush administration official has said.
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Director of the Office of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence at the US Department of Energy, stated this at a Congressional hearing on 'Nuclear Terrorism', when asked by Democratic Senator Daniel Akaka if India has rejected offers of nuclear security cooperation.
"Every country, whether it be India, United States, other country, could be potentially part of this small network of countries where terrorists can obtain material or expertise," he said.
The senior administration official made the statement before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which held the hearing on Nuclear Terrorism, chaired by independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.
"So my comment would be that certainly India is in the sphere of concern, as any country that has nuclear power and nuclear weapons," the top administration official said.
Asked how the United States can encourage India's cooperation, Mowatt-Marssen said, "I'll leave that to the policy-makers... but I know that it's an area of interest. And in the intelligence world, of course, we try to support the policy-makers with the information they might need to make the right decisions."
He added, "We know that every country with nuclear material takes the security of the material utmost seriously, including the governments of Pakistan, Russia, United States and other countries," he said.
"Obviously, our biggest concerns are about states that potentially are less stable or where there's a greater interest by terrorists to acquire the material. And of course, we prioritise and pay most attention to those countries," the senior official said.
"We also, in our scope of how we look at nuclear materials globally -- we, of course, include the United States in that category. We don't exclude the possibility that the problem could happen at home, whether it's the expertise or material...we have a very clear prioritisation," he said.
