WASHINGTON, July 29: A Pentagon plan to get information on the Middle East by setting up an online futures market where investors would bet on the probability of war, terrorism and other events is going to be scrapped, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday.

“My understanding is it’s going to be terminated,” Wolfowitz told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He added that while the Defence Department was supposed to be imaginative, “it sounds like maybe they got too imaginative” with the online futures market plan.

The Policy Analysis Market, launched online at http://www.policyanalysismarket.org by the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, aimed to let anonymous traders log on and wager money on when and whether such events as the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy might take place.

The plan drew sharp criticism from congressional Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who on Tuesday asked the Bush administration to renounce the plan and apologize for it.—Reuters