The US is negotiating "highly sensitive understandings" with Pakistani military which may allow elite American units to provide added security for the country's nuclear arsenal in case of a crisis, including a coup by rogue and extremist elements within the Army.

A concerned Obama Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military about its nuclear arsenal, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine.

During meetings with current and former officials in Washington and Pakistan, Hersh was told that the agreements would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.

At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train its soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities, the report says.

The principal fear was that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead, Hersh notes.

The Pakistani nuclear warheads and their triggers are stored separately from each other, and from their delivery devices, according to country's nuclear doctrine.

A former US senior intelligence official said that a team that has trained for years to remove or dismantle parts of the Pakistani arsenal has now been augmented by a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the elite counter-terrorism group, the article says.

"The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system," the former senior intelligence official told Hersh.

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