August 4, 2002	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 24,1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

ISLAMABAD, Aug 3: France has shown willingness to provide high-tech gadgets and finger prints collecting and collating equipment to Pakistan for checking terrorist activities in the region, Dawn reliably learnt.

Visiting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin at his meeting with Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider, here on Saturday, expressed willingness of French government to extend cooperation to Pakistan in its efforts to check terrorism, an official said.

The two sides exchanged notes about the investigations so far carried out by their respective agencies in the car-bombing case in which 11 French technicians were killed in Karachi earlier this year, a source said.

The investigations have not been completed as some forensic evidence had been taken by the French team to France and the report of that evidence is yet to be received, the source added.

AGOSTA SUBMARINES: De Villepin indicated willingness of the French government to send a team of technicians for resuming the work on Agosta submarine project.

Before the arrival of French technicians for assisting Pakistan Navy in assembling of one submarine and manufacturing of another one, a team of French security officials would come to finalise standard operating procedure, jointly with Pakistani agencies.

After putting in place standard operating procedures for the French technicians, the project would be resumed and completed within the stipulated time, the source said.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider apprised the French minister about the measures taken by the government to check terrorist activities in the country. However, he said, Pakistan agencies lacked the expertise and the high-tech equipment required to check such crimes.

He said this time the government would make arrangements inside Karachi Shipyard for the lodging of the French technicians and high security would be ensured.

The interior minister informed the visiting delegation that Pakistan had banned a number of sectarian and militant organizations and sealed their offices.

Over 600 terrorists and militants characterized as category A activists had been rounded up and interrogated, he told them.