Pakistan close to boosting atom bomb means - report

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - Pakistan is close to completing a second plutonium-producing reactor, is well into building a third and these could increase its ability to make atomic bombs, a U.S. think-tank said on Thursday.

"The wider implication ... (is that) there is a real risk this will exacerbate an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race and increase tensions more broadly between the two," the Institute for Science and International Security said in a report.

The regional arch-rivals have fought three wars, are both outside the global Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and have tested nuclear arms with Western technology imported ostensibly for peaceful atomic energy.

But a 45-nation nuclear export cartel approved a waiver to its rules this month allowing trade with India as part of a civilian nuclear cooperation pact it struck with the United States. The entire undertaking could erode the NPT, critics say.

ISIS, a well-connected Washington-based group, has been a prominent tracker of nuclear proliferation issues focusing on Iran, North Korea and Syria as well as Pakistan and India.

Emailed to Reuters, the ISIS report included commercial satellite images taken two weeks ago and in February and May showing construction of the second and third Khushab complexes.

Pakistan has an operating heavy-water reactor and heavy-water production plant already at Khushab.

A row of cooling towers indicated the second reactor was close to completion and could be ready to operate in a year's time, according to the 10-page report.