2. SOUNDBITE (English) Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense:
"The country's that have nuclear weapons have spent a good deal of time getting them and a good deal of time thinking about them and a good deal of time thinking about why they have them and if there is anything that begins become very ... people become aware of its that those weapons are enormously dangerous and enormously lethal and the risk of not handling them well is so great that you must in fact take every conceivable step to assure to their safety and their reliability and their protection. I have every confidence that Pakistan will do that."
3. Cutaway cameramen
4. SOUNDBITE: (English) Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense."I'm concerned. There is no question but he and al-Qaida and organisations and other terrorist networks have been actively trying to get chemical, biological, radiation weapons. There is also no question that the terrorist groups that exist in the world, and the President has been listing them sequentially, have very intimate relationships with the terrorist states that harbour those networks. We know those terrorist states have chemical and biological weapons and have weaponised them. We know they have been actively seeking radiation and nuclear capabilities. One reasonable people have to assume that terrorist networks either have or will have those kinds of capabilities in the immediate future. And we have to be very respectful of the numbers of people that can be killed. Not thousands as in the September 11th attack, but in the tens and hundreds of thousands can be killed by those weapons."
5. Wide view of Rumsfeld speaking
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense:
"There is a great deal of evidence that he has been actively taking steps to develop and acquire them."
7. Wide view of Rumsfeld
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense:
"You know in reality there isn't anyone who is smart enough or clever enough to manage the events on the ground, which are uncertain. We don't know how heavily it will be defended, it could be a long time before anyone could take it. Plus there is no way to predict what is going to happen on the political side, how is the U.N. going to work how is all of these different factions who are thinking things through politically as to how that provisional government ought to look, a transitional government ought to look. All people can do is express their best hopes that there will not be carnage when it is occupied, as has happened before, that there will be food for those people, as we have to care for their terribly difficult circumstance and that it will happen sooner rather than later."
United States government officials admitted on Sunday that Osama Bin Laden's claims he has access to weapons of mass destruction have them worried.
At the same time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeated earlier comments that he was satisfied with the precautions Pakistan was taking to ensure the safety of its nuclear weapons.
Newspaper reports on Sunday gave details of the Pakistani government moving critical nuclear weapons components two days after the September 11th attack.
Rumsfeld said he was very concerned that Osama bin Laden's boast that he has acquired weapons of mass destruction may be true.
He said many terrorist networks have close ties with states known to sponsor terrorism and reasonable people could assume those states would have provided assistance.
The U-S admits it cannot stop the Afghan Northern Alliance from taking the capital of Kabul, but Rumsfeld reiterated earlier statements by President Bush that they want the anti-Taliban forces to stop short of entering Kabul so that a broad-based, post-Taliban government can be formed.
Rumsfeld said that was his goal, too, adding that Kabul has been so devastated by two decades of war that whoever took the city would need immediate help to feed its approximately one million residents.
