ISLAMABAD, Nov 2: The director-general of Inter-Service Public Relations, Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi, on Friday denied reports that two former “scientists” of Pakistan’s nuclear programme had leaked secrets to the Taliban or any other outsiders.

At the Foreign Office daily news briefing, he said the retired officers who now ran an NGO and had visited Afghanistan many times, were questioned by the secret services but they were now at their residences.

Maj-Gen Qureshi described the reports as “trash, fictitious and baseless”.

FO spokesman Aziz Khan said the programme for a likely meeting between President Pervez Musharraf and US President George W. Bush in New York was being worked out, but there was no bilateral meeting on the cards between President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the sidelines of the US General Assembly.

He was asked a question about the prospects of the president’s meetings with the US president and the Indian prime minister in New York when they are expected to be in New York about the same time for the General Assembly between Nov 10 and 16.

The spokesman reiterated that in spite of the demand by the UNHCR and others for opening the border to allow Afghan refugees into Pakistan, the government was unable to permit free flow of refugees since it was already heavily burdened by the continued presence of some two to three million refugees.

The FO spokesman confirmed reports of anthrax powder being mailed to a newspaper and a computer firm in Karachi.