The security of Pakistan's estimated 50 nuclear warheads has been under global scrutiny since President Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November and concern has only risen since Bhutto's assassination Thursday.

But analysts said Pakistan's military was firmly in control of the nuclear arsenal and that it was unlikely Al-Qaeda or Taliban militants could get hold of the weapon components and missiles, which are kept separately.

Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said he thought the risk of weapons falling into rogue hands was slight.

"Pakistan's weapons are under the control of the military and by and large that will remain unchanged, I think. From a standpoint of security we'll probably have continuity and relatively satisfactory control," he told AFP.

Even if the country descended into chaos, leaving the government unable to govern, the military's line of authority would remain in place, he said.

"This is not a reassuring set of changes that we're experiencing, but on the other hand I think the military for the moment has a lot of coherence and solidarity. I think we'll see that continue," Spector said.

"I think the cadres that actually protect the weapons and guard the sites are fairly disciplined and for the last five years or so I think they've been better trained and individuals with Islamist leanings have been called out.

"I think this is cause for watchfulness, but I would not say alarm."

Daniel Markey, from the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said Pakistan faced a very real threat "because they have a nuclear arsenal and because they are operating in a very dangerous environment."

"But that hasn't changed over the last 24 hours, and the type of street violence that we are likely to see is not directed in any way towards the nuclear establishment," he said.

He said the real threat would come if violence escalated beyond the control of the police and paramilitary forces and the government used the military against people on the streets.

"That's where the army could, as an institution, break apart," he said.

"That's at the only stage where you could see the nuclear weapons establishment coming under threat, because it would be unclear as to where the nuclear establishment stood within that larger army infrastructure.

"But we're not there yet and, hopefully, we won't get there," stressed Markey, a former US State Department policy planner for South Asia.

Bhutto herself said in an interview in November with the German daily Bild that she was worried about what would happen if extremists managed to take control of the country's nuclear capability, which Pakistan gained in 1998.

Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 bloodless coup and who became a frontline US ally in the war on terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said there was nothing to worry about.

In an interview with Fox News radio earlier this month, he said Pakistan's nuclear weapons were under "total custodial controls," a view echoed by White House spokesman Scott Stanzel on Friday.

"At this time, as far as I know, it is the assessment of the intelligence community that Pakistan's weapons arsenal is secure," he told reporters.

Andrew Koch, a defense and security analyst with the consulting firm Scribe Strategies and Advisors, told AFP that the safety of the nuclear arsenal was not generally affected by day to day political movements.

"It's under very tight control by the army," he told AFP. "The one scenario you would worry about is the country literally breaks up. It's not something you'd worry about short term, it's more of a long term fear."

He earlier said that some scientists connected with the nuclear program were suspected of harboring extremist sympathies and could leak secrets to groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The reputation of Pakistan, the only Muslim country known to have nuclear weapons, was tarnished in 2004 with the sale of atomic secrets on a global black market headed by its disgraced chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Khan confessed to passing atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was pardoned by Musharraf but remains under virtual house arrest.

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