Pakistan Probes Nuke Tech Leak

Pakistan has expanded an investigation of its premier nuclear weapons laboratory, detaining as many as seven scientists and administrators amid allegations sensitive technology may have spread to countries such as Iran, North Korea and Libya, officials said Sunday.

Pakistan has strongly denied any official involvement in sharing technology to those countries but has acknowledged that individual scientists acting on their own account may have leaked information.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said over the past few days between five and seven personnel at the Khan Research Laboratories were taken in for questioning. But he said the detained men were not "necessarily involved in something or have allegations against them."

Among the detained was Islam-ul Haq, a director at the laboratory, who was picked up Saturday as he was dining at the residence of the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The laboratory is named after Khan, a national hero for leading Pakistan to its underground test of the Islamic world's first nuclear bomb in 1998. The bomb was designed as a deterrent to Pakistan's nuclear-armed neighbor, India. Haq is Khan's principal staff officer.

Haq's wife, Nilofar Islam, said Khan told her that her husband was detained but "we have had no contact with him. We don't know where he is and what he is being asked."

The nuclear program investigations came as Pakistan intensifies crackdowns as part of the U.S.-led war on terror, most recently arresting seven suspected al Qaeda militants on Sunday and seizing a weapons cache in the teeming port city of Karachi.

During the past two months, Pakistan has interrogated a handful of scientists at the laboratory, acting on information about Iran's nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog, officials say.

Khan has also been questioned, although he has not been detained and is still treated as an official dignitary in Pakistan.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said American officials have presented evidence to Pakistan's leaders of Pakistani involvement in the spread of nuclear weapons technology.

The Jan. 2 arrest of South African-based businessman Asher Karni at a Denver airport, accused of smuggling nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan, deepened suspicions of the country's involvement in the nuclear black market.

The New York Times also reported that sophisticated centrifuge design technology used to enrich uranium had been passed to Libya even after a pledge by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to rein in Pakistani scientists. Pakistan dismissed the allegation as "absolutely false."

Libya announced last month it was giving up its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs and pledged to name its suppliers.

U.S. officials say many of the names probably will be Pakistani. They say evidence points to Pakistani nuclear experts as the source of at least some technology that Libya used; similar reports have arisen about probable Pakistani assistance to Iran.

Pakistan also has been accused of swapping nuclear technology to North Korea in return for missiles.

On Sunday, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, spokesman for Pakistan's powerful military, said Pakistan remained "committed to nonproliferation."

The allegations could damage a growing U.S. relationship with Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.