29 May 2004	Saturday	09 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

KUALA LUMPUR, May 28: Malaysia on Friday arrested an alleged middleman in the international nuclear black market scandal surrounding Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, officials said on Friday.

The alleged agent, Sri Lankan businessman B.S.A. Tahir, was described by US President George Bush this year as Dr A.Q. Khan's "chief financial officer and money launderer".

Mr Tahir was arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur as a threat to national security, government officials said. They gave no further details, but under the wide-ranging Internal Security Act (ISA), Mr Tahir can be held indefinitely without trial.

The scandal embroiled a son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Kamaluddin, when it was revealed that a company he owned, Scomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE), had manufactured centrifuge parts seized on a ship headed for Libya last year.

A police probe cleared the company, which said it had been misled about the purpose and destination of the parts, allegedly ordered by Mr Tahir on behalf of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The arrest of Tahir, who is married to a Malaysian and divided his time between his business interests here and in Dubai, came as a surprise after government officials repeatedly said he had apparently not violated any regulations and was "a free man".

Mr Tahir, 44, admitted to police that he acted as a middleman for Dr Khan, and gave a detailed insider's view of the proliferation scandal, according to an official report handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency in February.

Mr Tahir said Dr Khan asked him to send centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, to Iran in 1994 or 1995 and had told him that an undisclosed amount of enriched uranium was sent by air from Pakistan to Libya around 2001.

While naming Mr Tahir as Khan's "deputy", Washington had not called publicly for his arrest. Instead, it sent its top anti-proliferation official John Wolf to Malaysia in March to press for the imposition of more stringent export controls.

Malaysia is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which governs the movement of materials which can be used to make atomic bombs, such as uranium, but it has not signed an additional protocol covering nuclear-related parts. The government said after Mr Wolf's visit that it did not see the need to sign the protocol "at present". -AFP