WASHINGTON, Oct 29: The United States said on Monday there was no truth in a story published in an American journal that a special US unit was training with Israeli commandos to take out Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in case of a coup against President Pervez Musharraf.

The story, by Seymour Hersh, appears in this week’s issue of the New Yorker magazine. It quotes both serving and retired US officials as sources.

But, asked to comment on it, a senior State Department official refuted the story and said there was no truth in it.

The official added that the US believed Pakistan was well aware of securing whatever nuclear components, materiels and facilities it had and was confident that steps were in place to secure the safety of these assets.

Concern has often been expressed at seminars and discussions in Washington about the possibility of a takeover of Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities by militants and extremists. In fact, this possibility has been put forward, by both American and Pakistan sources, as an argument to advocate supporting the present military regime or a moderate regime in Pakistan.

US officials are known to have engaged their Pakistani counterparts in intensive discussions to seek assurances about effective command and control systems, and the question was believed to have been gone into again during Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar’s visit to Washington. The US has also advocated greater confidence-building measures in the nuclear field between Pakistan and India.

The New Yorker piece charged a US force was training in the United States with members of Israel’s Unit 262, a commando team that has engaged in behind-the-lines operations including theft and assasinations.

The US unit concerned, operating under Pentagon control with CIA assistance, specializes in slipping undetected into foreign countries to find, and if necessary disarm, nuclear weapons, the magazine reported.

US sources are said to have told the magazine that Pakistan has at least 24 nuclear warheads that can be delivered by intermediate-range missiles and F-16 airplanes. However the US intelligence cannot be sure of the precise location of all of the Pakistani warheads, officials said.

US regional experts quoted by the magazine say they doubt General Musharraf’s ability to control the military and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if there is a coup —- and say dissident fundamentalists within the military might try to seize a nuclear warhead.

One US intelligence officer expressed alarm over the recent questioning in Pakistan of two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists with reported Taliban connections, describing it as “the tip of a very serious iceberg.” The incident shows that “pro-Taliban sentiment has overcome state loyalty among Pakistani nuclear scientists, thought to be fiercely patriotic”.

According to the magazine, ISI has also had close ties with the Taliban in the past and might still include many pro-Taliban elements. A senior official told Seymour Hersh, the author of the story, he was concerned about an uprising of dissident ISI officers with access to nuclear storage sites. A former US diplomat described the ISI as “a parallel government of its own,” and a US intelligence officer said that allowing the ISI to be the US “eyes and ears” in the region is “our biggest mistake.”