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The US has a contingency plan to "snatch-and-grab" Pakistan's nuclear weapons, if and when the President believes they are threat to either America or its interests, a media report has said, amid strains in bilateral ties.

Plans have been drawn up for dealing with worst-case scenarios in Pakistan, NBC news reported quoting current and former US officials, who say that ensuring security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has long been a high US security priority even before 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Among the scenarios drawn by the report is Pakistan plunging into internal chaos, terrorist mounting a serious attack against a nuclear facility, hostilities breaking out with India or Islamic extremist taking charge of the government or the Pakistan army.

NBC said the greatest success of the US war on terrorism, the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in his safe house in Pakistan in May..., has fulled concerns about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

The report said there were increasing suspicions among US officials that Osama had support within the ISI and the Abbottabad operation had emboldened those in Washington who believe an orchestrated campaign of lightning raids to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons could succeed.

In the aftermath of the bin Laden raid, US military officials have testified before Congress about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the threat posed by "loose nukes" - nuclear weapons or materials outside the government's control. And earlier Pentagon reports also outline scenarios in which US forces would intervene to secure nuclear weapons that were in danger of falling into the wrong hands.

China will give Pakistan a squadron of the advanced J-10B multi-role, all-weather fighter aircraft in a bid to boost the strategic reach of its close ally, a media report has said.

China has made the offer to Pakistan Army's Chief of General Staff, Lt Gen Waheed Arshad, who has just concluded a week long visit to China, the Pakistani Urdu daily Jang said.

Pakistan will be the first country, after China, to have such advanced aircraft which are equipped with the latest weapons, it said.

During Arshad's visit, China reiterated its defence and economic support to Pakistan and assured him that the relationship between the two countries will reach new heights and Beijing's efforts for the safety and security of "all weather" ally will be never-ending.

Lt Gen Arshad visited many sensitive places in China and called on General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of People's Liberation Army and other officials including Lt General Ren Haiquan, the vice president of the National Defence University.

Though China has earlier supplied Pakistan with fighter jets, this is the first time that it is supplying advanced jets to Pakistan.

China and Pakistan have also jointly built an advanced fighter jet, JF-17, commonly known as 'Thunder'.

8 months since the handover of the first ZDK-03 to the Pakistan Air Force, the second bird is undergo final preparations before before hitting the paint shop.

Pakistani pilots flying modernised versions of the 1970s-vintage F-16 Falcon fighter have beaten the RAF's brand-new Eurofighter Typhoon superfighters during air combat exercises in Turkey, according to a Pakistani officer.

Analysis:

The RAF Typhoon, formerly known as the Eurofighter, should nonetheless have been vastly superior in air-to-air combat whether BVR or close in within visual range (WVR). The cripplingly expensive, long-delayed Eurofighter was specifically designed to address the defects of its predecessor the Tornado F3 – famously almost useless in close-in, dogfighting-style air combat. The Typhoon was meant to see off such deadly in-close threats as Soviet "Fulcrums" and "Flankers" using short-range missiles fired using helmet-mounted sight systems: such planes were thought well able to beat not just Tornados but F-16s in close fighting, and this expectation was borne out after the Cold War when the Luftwaffe inherited some from the East German air force and tried them out in exercises.

Pakistan's government jacked up defense spending and government employees' pensions in a new budget June 3 that set a deficit of 4 percent of GDP.

The budget for the fiscal year 2011-2012 starting July 1 came as pressure mounts on Pakistan to launch a military offensive in the restive North Waziristan region, known as the hub of Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants.

It earmarked 495 billion rupees ($5.7 billion) for defense, an 11 percent increase on the current year.

"We stand by our valiant men, who are laying down their lives to safeguard our country," finance minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh told parliament. "The country has constantly been suffering because of the existing security situation," but the government was determined to improve the economy and provide security to the people, he said.

More than 4,410 people have been killed across Pakistan in bomb blasts and suicide attacks blamed in Taliban- and Al-Qaeda-linked militants since July 2007.

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for a string of recent attacks against government security forces and has vowed to launch even larger ones to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden, shot dead in a U.S. raid last month.

The total budget for the next year was fixed at 2,504 billion rupees ($29.1 billion), with a budget deficit of 850 billion rupees ($9.9 billion), or four percent of gross domestic product (GDP), Shaikh said.

The budget also provides rises of up to 20 percent in government employees' pensions and promises to bring at least 2.3 million new taxpayers into the tax net.

Pakistan has long defied Western pressure to end giant tax-dodging in a country where barely 1 percent of the population pays at all, as a corrupt bureaucracy starves energy, health and education of desperately needed funds.

The International Monetary Fund last year halted a $11.3 billion assistance package over a lack of progress on reforms, principally on tax.

In the wake of catastrophic 2010 floods that cost the economy $10 billion, Washington donated hundreds of millions of dollars and demanded that Pakistan's rich, whose lifestyles outstrip many in the West, step up to the plate.

Shaikh said Pakistani exports grew by 28 percent, an unprecedented rate, during the current fiscal year.

"We also hope that our remittances will reach a level of $12 billion by close of this year," he said, adding: "Our foreign currency reserves have reached $17.3 billion."

He said that the government had achieved some macrostability, checked inflation and begun to impact the growth rate.

Local newspaper The News reported this week that Pakistan had decided to launch a "careful and meticulous" military offensive in North Waziristan after a recent visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad.

But Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, the corps commander supervising all military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told reporters on June 1, "We will undertake operation in North Waziristan when we want to."