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[May 02, 2006]

Pakistan scientists aiding Iran in race to develop N-bomb

(The Express On Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)SIX scientists working on Iran's nuclear programme have been helping Al Qaeda develop a "dirty" atomic bomb that could be used to launch a fresh attack on Britain or America.

The Pakistanis, who fled to Iran in 2004, have previously worked on the programme that gave Pakistan its nuclear weapons.

Britain's secret intelligence service MI6 says the scientists have been "advising Al Qaeda on how to weaponise fissionable materials it has now obtained".

The news follows Osama bin Laden's latest boast that "Al Qaeda did not find it difficult to obtain weapons-grade material".

Threatening to unleash a new wave of attacks on the West, the terror chief claimed: "We have contacts in Russia with other militant groups.

Enough material to make a tactical nuke is available for GBP15 million."

One of the scientists named by MI6 - Bashiruddin Mahmood - has claimed he has met Al Qaeda leaders and Taliban chief Mullah Omar, but refused to work on their nuclear plot.

Arrested in Pakistan in 2004, he told security agents: "They had asked me to devise a radiological bomb. It would be constructed from nuclear material wrapped in conventional high explosive which bin Laden had obtained from a nuclear storage site in Uzbekistan. I refused to do so."


However, soon after he was freed, he fled to Iran, taking with him Muhammad Zubair, Saeed Akhhter, Murad Qasim, Imtaz Baig and Waheed Nasir who had all worked for "father of the Islamic bomb" Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, and had helped detonate Pakistan's first nuke.

And last night Paris-based nuclear terrorism expert Alexander Cirilovic warned: "Depending on the quality of the fissionable material bin Laden has obtained, the combined scientific skills would be able to create considerably more than a 'dirty bomb'."

Dr Khan remains under house arrest in Pakistan after confessing he had provided both Iran and North Korea with details of how to make their own nuclear weapons.

High-level sources in MI6 and the CIA say the six scientists would only pass nuclear secrets to Al Qaeda with the approval of Iran's unpredictable President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And Mr Cirilovic warned that the country is now "well advanced in providing uranium-enriched materials for nuclear bombs".

Yesterday Iran continued to defy the United Nations with its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment programme - which it claims is for peaceful purposes only.

But Russia and China still maintained their opposition to UN sanctions - and that means they could veto any plans put to the Security Council by the US or Britain.

In a video released on the internet yesterday, Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri bragged that hundreds of suicide bombers had "broken America's back" in three years of war in Iraq.

His rant came just days after another video, from Al Qaeda's Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, calling for the overthrow of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

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