Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's army has tightened the security around the country's nuclear weapons facilities over the past six months and hasn't detected plots by extremist groups to attack them, the director of the military's nuclear agency said.

Pakistan's nuclear ``security systems are second to none,`` said Khalid Kidwai, a retired lieutenant general who heads the army's Strategic Planning Division, which oversees nuclear weapons and their security. He spoke today at a press briefing in Rawalpindi.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, earlier this month said he felt ``a great deal of anxiety over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.'' ElBaradei's concern -- that Pakistani nuclear materials or technology might be seized by the Taliban or other Islamic religious militants -- has helped fuel public debate in the United States over possible U.S. action to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Kidwai has recently met foreign diplomats and U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman in a campaign to defuse the issue.

Kidwai said Pakistan has accepted U.S. equipment, including special vehicles, cameras and night-vision devices, and help in setting up a training academy for its military personnel who deal with nuclear weapons and their safety. Such aid has totaled about $8 million to $10 million, rather than the $100 million cited by U.S. officials quoted by the New York Times in November.

Heightened Alertness

In the past six months, Kidwai said, ``our state of alertness has gone up'' as the Taliban and allied militants have attacked army posts and expanded their battle for control in Pakistan's northwest, near the border with Afghanistan. ``We are conscious of this threat, absolutely,'' he said.

Kidwai said his unit was separate from other parts of Pakistan's army, notably the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which for decades sponsored jihadist guerrilla groups. Afghan and NATO officers fighting the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan have said ISI still includes pro-Taliban officers.

``We are not dependent on any other agencies,'' Kidwai said.

The Strategic Planning Division oversees about 10,000 troops guarding nuclear facilities, and conducts an intrusive ``personnel reliability program'' on about 2,000 of the top nuclear scientists and technicians, Kidwai said.

Checks on Individuals

His division checks those individuals for ``political, financial and moral'' fitness and must approve any trips they make outside Pakistan, he said.

Kidwai acknowledged global concern over possible nuclear proliferation from Pakistan because of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a former senior director of the arms program who confessed publicly in 2004 to selling weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan, who remains under house arrest.

Controls instituted since 1999 now prevent such leakage, Kidwai said.

Tightened monitoring of technical staff has found only ``very minor'' security breaches, Kidwai said. Asked to characterize them, he said: ``There was a particular scientist who went to a mosque and gave an anti-Musharraf talk. And we went and took him out the next day,'' dismissing him from his post.

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in Islamabad at jrupert3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 26, 2008 14:00 EST