Nuclear scientists held amid claims of proliferation

PAKISTAN has expanded its investigation of the country’s premier nuclear weapons laboratory, detaining as many as seven scientists and administrators for questioning, officials said yesterday.

This news comes amid allegations that sensitive technology may have spread to countries such as Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Also yesterday, Pakistani agents arrested seven al-Qaida suspects and confiscated weapons during an early morning raid in the southern city of Karachi, an intelligence officer said.

As many as 60 armed officers carried out the raid at the Qasim Apartments complex in the Gulistan-e-Jauhar area of the city, surrounding the building before moving in, witnesses said.

Officers arrested five men and two women in the 3am raid, the intelligence officer said on condition of anonymity. Two of the men were Egyptians, three were Afghans and the two women were Arabs, he said without giving details about their alleged ranks in the terror network.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said: “our information is that these are al-Qaida people. One is a recognised man.” He had no further details.

Addressing the detentions of nuclear scientists, Ahmed said that over the past two or three days between five and seven personnel at the Khan Research Laboratories had been taken in for “debriefing.” Among them was Islam-ul Haq, a director at the laboratory.

Two uniformed men believed to be intelligence agents picked him up as he was dining on Saturday at the residence of the father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The laboratory is named after Khan, a national hero for leading Pakistan to its underground test of the Islamic world’s first nuclear bomb in 1998, designed as a deterrent against its larger rival, India.

Haq is Khan’s principal staff officer. “We have had no contact with him,” Haq’s wife, Nilofar Islam, told Associated Press. “We don’t know where he is and what he is being asked.”

Though all the men remained in custody, Ahmed played down the detentions, saying the personnel being debriefed were not “necessarily involved in something or have allegations against them,” he said.

In the past two months, Pakistan has interrogated a handful of scientists at the laboratory, after receiving unspecified documents from the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran’s nuclear programme, officials say.

Among those who have been questioned is Khan, although he has not been detained and is still treated as an official dignitary in Pakistan.

The proliferation allegations are an embarrassment to Washington, which calls Pakistan a key ally in the war on terrorism for its help in rounding up al-Qaida suspects and support in toppling the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.