October 27, 2001	Saturday	Shaba'an 9, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: Pakistan has a unilateral commitment to the international community that it will not transfer technology or materials of sensitive nature including nuclear material to any other country or entity, Foreign Office spokesman said on Friday.

Strongly refuting reports carried by some western media organizations that nuclear material had been passed on to Osama bin Laden, Foreign Office spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan at his daily briefing said that Pakistan had an impeccable record of honouring the commitment of not passing the sensitive material to any third country or entity.

“These reports are absurd,” he said, adding that Pakistan had possessed the nuclear material for the past 15 years.

Mr Khan said that Pakistan’s nuclear material was under multi-layered custodial control.

To a question about reports of detention of two nuclear scientist by the government, he denied that these scientist had been detained or arrested on the charge or suspicion of passing nuclear related material or information.

Bashiruddin Mehmood and Chaudhry Majeed, he said, after their retirement from Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission had formed a charity organization - Tamir-i-Nau Afghanistan - to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghan refugees.

The government, he added, had taken a policy decision to ascertain the credentials of all the non-governmental organizations active in Afghanistan and as a part of that policy certain questions had been asked from them about their NGO.

He categorically denied that the investigation had been related to the suspicion of passing some information to the Osama.

Earlier, the spokesman said that the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, was arriving on Saturday.

He also read out a resolution adopted by the European parliament on Thursday in which it called for resolving the Kashmir issue and offered its services to broker a peace deal between India and Pakistan.

When asked to comment on a statement of some American officials that military operations in Afghanistan would continue during the month of Ramazan, he said, Pakistan had already cleared its position that there should be no operation during Ramazan.