ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: The US-led coalition said on Monday that Washington and Islamabad were cooperating on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Asked whether the US authorities had requested the Pakistan government to question two of its nuclear scientists as had been reported by the New York Times, Kenton Keith, spokesman for the coalition information service, said Pakistan and the US shared the concern on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Answering a question about a recent visit by CIA chief George J. Tenet to Pakistan, he said the cooperation between the two countries was going on at various levels.

As regards a videotape recovered from Kandahar, the spokesman said they were considering it making public. “The tape ties him (Osama) to the Sept 11 incidents.”

Mr Kenton maintained that they had no doubts about Osama’s involvement in the terrorist attacks and the tape “ties it down completely.”

The video showed him in glory over the Sept 11 atrocities, he added.

The spokesman dismissed reports about Osama’s arrest by British troops as highly speculative.

A foreign correspondent asked whether the British troops had refused to hand over Osama to the US forces without a guarantee that he would not be awarded death penalty. The spokesman said that British troops were not operating independently.

He said the campaign to arrest Osama was going on and the coalition had made considerable progress to tighten its noose around the target.

He said they did not have confirmed sighting of Osama but they believed that he was still in Afghanistan. Both Osama and Mulla Omar were in Afghanistan and they had no credible report that they had left the country.

About Kandahar he said it was the first challenge for interim prime minister Hamid Karzai to restore law and order in the city.