December 10, 2001	Monday	Ramazan 24, 1422

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WASHINGTON, Dec 9: The United States has asked Pakistan to question two of its nuclear weapons scientists it (US) believes may have links to Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, according to a report published on Sunday.

The United States is concerned that its Afghan-based opponents in the war against terrorism may be developing a nuclear weapons capability, although there has been no proof of this.

White House officials said a visit last weekend by CIA director George J. Tenet to Pakistan was in part linked to N-issues.

But Pakistan officials said their government had resisted US moves to question the scientists, fearing that they could reveal Pakistan’s nuclear secrets to Washington, which is seeking closer ties with local nuclear rival India, the New York Times reported.

Pakistan has always blocked attempts to assess its nuclear programme.

Pakistan officials said the weapons experts, Suleiman Asad and Mohammed Ali Mukhtar, were unavailable for questioning as they were conducting research in Myanmar, the report said.

One official said President General Pervez Musharraf had requested Myanmar to grant the scientists temporary asylum, the paper wrote.

American officials said that two other Pakistan nuclear scientists who did meet Taliban and Al-Qaeda officials were not weapons experts. “It was the blind leading the blind,” the Times quoted one official as saying.—dpa