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Barely a month before the 9/11 terror attacks, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, said to be close to disgraced Abdul Qadeer Khan, met up with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and offered to supply him with atomic weapons, according to a newly released book. Chaudiri Abdul Majeed and Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held a series of senior posts in Pakistani nuke programme, went to Taliban [Images] headquarters in Kandahar in mid-August 2001 and spent three days with bin Laden who was keen on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the book says. In fact, Mahmood was said to be more close to...

(Islamabad/Moscow, October 25) There is now a nuclear dimension to the Afghan war. A second retired Pakistani atomic scientist was picked up by Islamabad on Tuesday night on the suspicion that he was developing a nuclear device for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The arrests followed tip-offs by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Pakistani authorities. Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Abdul Majeed, both scientists who had retired from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), were picked up after the FBI provided evidence of their links to jehadi outfits. The Pakistan Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haidar, said on ...