A string of deadly attacks by militants against Pakistani targets in the last few days, including an assault on the country’s army headquarters, has reignited concerns over the security of its nuclear weapons. AP has an interesting piece looking at the issue, including a useful reminder about the perils of overconfidence from Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists.

“‘If a relatively small group of people is able to penetrate into their “Pentagon,” then it might show something about the overconfidence of the Pakistanis, and that is worrisome--it's surprising that they were able to go in there relatively simply,’ Kristensen said.”

The attacks have come as the Obama administration tries to find its feet at a time when a number of commentators are questioning some of the mixed signals the administration is putting out over its AfPak policy.

I asked our Pakistan correspondent for the view from Pakistan, and he’s also pretty damning about the oscillations on the US side.

“The recent shifts in US ‘AfPak’ policy have continued to provoke consternation here in Pakistan. The recently approved Kerry-Lugar Bill, which seeks to pump some $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next 5 years, has been greeted with suspicion both among ordinary Pakistanis and the state. Although both the president and prime minister here lauded the bill, the army was much less sanguine, calling the conditionality attached to the funds a serious risk to national security. The aid is ostensibly aimed at ensuring that moneys given to Pakistan are used to develop the country and combat extremism.

“The army--and many Pakistanis too--feel that this is a form of Trojan horse designed to increase American encroachment into the geopolitical life of Pakistan. The word sovereignty has been bandied about a lot too--along with the almost daily missile strikes in the frontier border with Afghanistan, the question is the extent to which new money from the US will be linked to Pakistan’s own strategic national interests?

“Conditions attached to the aid include ensuring that the Army is not subverting the judiciary or the political process, and, perhaps most controversially, access to A.Q. Khan and other Pakistanis associated with the country’s nuclear weapons programme. There’s an understandable sense of concern in Pakistan about all of this. Why doesn’t the US condition aid to other allies with nuclear weapons, like Israel and India, with access to nationals involved in their respective programmes? And how can Pakistan be assured that the conditions are not triggered by the US because it wishes Pakistan to take a different policy tack than it currently is? The concern in Pakistan is that criticisms could be manufactured to suit the conditions attached to the aid so that Pakistan plays by the American song sheet.”

With reports this week that Pakistan is preparing to shift its strategy and launch an offensive against the Taliban’s key stronghold in South Waziristan, I thought now would be a good time to get an update from our Pakistan correspondent, Mustafa Qadri, on the unfolding situation there:

“The local network of Taliban is continuing its brutal suicide attacks throughout the north western frontier of the country, despite the loss of overall leader, Baitullah Mehsud. These include a string of bloody bombings in the centre of Peshawar, the political and economic hub of the region, and a police station near the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan that left at least 16 dead and scores of others injured.

“The Pakistan Army has been pushing with its advance into regions, like Swat and Orakzai Tribal Agency, formerly occupied by the Taliban. But in Washington, there’s continued disaffection at Pakistan’s performance, particularly with respect to Afghan Taliban based in its territory. Credible newspaper reports recently claimed that senior US officials threatened to expand the controversial drone missile attacks to Quetta, the dusty capital of Pakistan's thinly populated but resource rich southern province of Balochistan.”

Mustafa has spent a lot of time in the region in the last year, including in the Swat valley area, where he met with refugees fleeing the fighting. He’s putting a story together for The Diplomat on his experiences in the camps.

But in the meantime, he offers this interesting insight into US strategy across the border in Afghanistan.

“Although top military commanders want to expand troop numbers, the White House is after quite the opposite – more focused, counter-insurgency operations using greater airpower and remote military assets and less boots on the ground”, he says.

“Once the political drama surrounding the disputed presidential elections dies down, expect a tapering down of US victory conditions away from state building and towards security and stabilisation -- if this hasn't already started. In effect, this will mean making deals with those Taliban commanders willing to cease hostilities in exchange for a negotiated settlement of their grievances while simultaneously hunting down those other insurgents, and members of al-Qaeda, that are seen as too dangerous to be left alone.”

Nothing exciting to report on the trilateral meeting in Seoul yesterday of foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea. But what WILL be interesting to see is if Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama can keep up the impressive diplomatic pace he has been running at when he visits Seoul next month to meet South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Hatoyama won praise at home for his bold UN climate change speech and early meeting with Hu Jintao in New York last week. Indeed, his international overtures started before he was even elected, with a pledge not to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, in contrast to some of his predecessors who have infuriated China by doing so. Of course this is only a gesture, but it’s an important one that will mean Japan avoids unnecessarily giving China a diplomatic stick with which to beat it.

But welcome though these moves are, they won’t replace some kind of lasting agreement on the territorial issues that dog Japan and its two neighbors -- with China over the disputed joint gas-development project in the East China Sea and South Korea over disputed islets (known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan). The dangers on the latter especially were made clear when I spoke last year with leading Korea watcher L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. He offered the following advice:

‘If Japan thinks about this in terms of its national interests, this is not the Northern Territories (dispute with Russia), it is not Senkaku, there are not oilfields. If Japan is thinking about its role in the region then Japan ought to be big on this issue and ought to make a move to resolve it.’

Question now is if Hatoyama’s honeymoon will allow him some space domestically to make some tough international decisions.

There’s been plenty going on over the last few days - which have been a national holiday in Japan – including at the United Nations where Barack Obama made his maiden speech as US president to the General Assembly (which has come in for criticism and some praise he might feel he can do without).

But what’s been getting most attention today is Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi’s rambling (96 minutes!) tirade in which he railed against the unfairness of the current Security Council set up and broached a range of conspiracy theories but also praised Obama as a ‘son’.

Top human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, writing in the Daily Beast, called the speech ‘arguably the lowest point’ in the UN’s history and ‘lack humor at its zenith’.

He has a point, and it’s a shame because the spiel has overshadowed the reasonable point that Gaddhafi did make, which is that the current arrangement for the UNSC is outdated. If it is going to have any legitimacy among developing nations moving forward it will need to include in some form or other, perhaps through a non-veto wielding permanent seat, African representation.

This point is taken up by David Graham who writes in Newsweek:

“The council's structure─five permanent members and 10 rotating members─is a relic of the Cold War, designed to allow the East and West to balance, but not well calibrated to a world with many power centers and only one superpower.”

He’s right. And there are also strong cases for India and Japan (as well as Brazil and Germany), all of whom have been recommended for permanent seats by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

An op-ed http://online.wsj.com/article/ penned by three US senators in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend neatly encapsulates the problems facing US policymakers in maintaining support for the ‘good war’ in Afghanistan. Indeed the senators, including John McCain, call for an escalation, arguing that although sending more troops is no guarantee of success, failure to send them is a guarantee of failure.

But such demands, which come on the back of reports like this one outlining the Taliban’s apparent rise in Kandahar, run counter to some of the commentary coming out of the region.

I spoke with UNESCO Peace Chair Madhav Nalapat over the weekend for his take on what is going on in Afghanistan, and he was pretty gloomy about NATO’s prospects. He says the continuing troop presence is merely exacerbating anger among locals and that the US should largely withdraw as soon as possible and restrict itself to tasks like training local police.

He also argued that the current focus on the fairness of elections is a Western/NGO obsession not shared by many Afghans, who he says just want effective government. He cites the example of his own country, India, where he says many would trade fairness for competence. I don’t necessarily agree with all of this analysis – even though turnout was apparently low, millions of Afghans still cared enough about the polls to risk their lives voting last month. But he does highlight one of the real problems the US needs to address in Afghanistan, and that is the apparent sense that there’s a sort of Fortress Kabul been created, but that outside the city the central government is forgetting about the people and it’s every man for himself.

But if the US does decide to ramp up its contribution, and even if it can avoid a corresponding increase in civilian casualties, winning the hearts and minds of Afghan’s isn’t always as straightforward as some might think/hope it is, as highlighted in this fascinating insight  from David Wood over at Politics Daily on the problems with American ‘generosity’.