M A I N   N E W S

N-scientists’ accounts sealed

Islamabad, December 30
The Pakistan’s government has frozen the accounts of two nuclear scientists suspected of links with Osama bin Laden, a central bank spokesman said today.

Assets of Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid, who worked for Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999, have been frozen by the State Bank of Pakistan, spokesman Syed Wasimuddin said by telephone from Karachi.

The bank also froze accounts of wealthy industrialist Mohammed Tufail, he said.

All three were on the board of directors of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, or Nation Builder, an Islamic charity declared a terrorist group by the USA on December 20.

President George W. Bush ordered the group’s assets frozen along with those of the three Pakistani men.

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council followed the US move and ordered a freeze on the assets of the group and the three men.

Gen Rashid Quereshi, spokesman for Pakistan’s military-led government, said the charity’s assets had been frozen. He gave no details on what other measures the government plans against the group and its leaders.

After their retirement, the two scientists made several trips to Afghanistan, where they met Bin Laden. But both deny transferring any nuclear-related information to Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida group and said they only ran education programmes and helped poor Afghan farmers.

They claimed that they talked with Bin Laden about plans for the rehabilitation of Afghan people.

Meanwhile, Mau-lana Masood Azhar, head of Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of the terrorist groups involved in the attack on the Indian Parliament, was on Sunday remanded in 90 days custody and shifted from his native Bahawalpur town to a prison in the Sargodha range, a domestic news agency reported.

WASHINGTON: Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar has denied that his government is redeploying troops from the Afghan border region, where they are involved in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida associates. But he warned that Islamabad could be forced to move these forces to the border with India if tensions with its eastern neighbour continue to rise. Agencies