- ISLAMABAD (ANI) -- A leading
Pakistani nuclear scientist, barred from talking to reporters, has made
it known through his son that Osama bin Laden approached him before the
Sept. 11 attacks for help in making nuclear weapons, reports Toronto Star.
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- The son, Azim Mahmood, said in an interview: "Basically
Osama asked my father, 'How can a nuclear bomb be made and can you help
us make one?'"
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- "My father said, 'No, and secondly you must understand
it is not a child's play for you to build a nuclear bomb.' "
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- The scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, is under a
gag order from Pakistani intelligence officials, but his conversations
with bin Laden in 2000 and as late as July 2001 were reconstructed by his
son.
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- The conversations as described by the son clearly show
bin Laden was interested in developing nuclear weapons. They don't, however,
shed any light on whether the Al Qaeda leader had taken even the first
steps along that complex technological road.
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- The U.S. Embassy declined to discuss Mahmood's story.
American officials in Washington also would not comment.
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- There has been previous evidence of Al Qaeda's interest
in nuclear weapons. Computers found by journalists and U.S. troops at a
variety of facilities in Afghanistan indicated Al Qaeda had sought to obtain
and develop nuclear and other potent weapons.
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- During a New York trial two years ago stemming from bombings
at two U.S. embassies in Africa, a former bin Laden aide testified he was
ordered in 1993 to try to buy uranium in the black market to develop a
nuclear weapon. Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl said Al Qaeda was prepared to spend
1.5 million dollars, but he didn't know if a purchase was ever made.
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- In addition, U.S. officials have said captured Al Qaeda
lieutenant Abu Zubaydah told American interrogators the terrorist network
was working on a "dirty bomb," a conventional bomb that would
scatter radioactive material. Such a radiological weapon would be far less
deadly and damaging than a nuclear explosion.
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- A United Nations report issued by experts monitoring
Al Qaeda movements warned that Al Qaeda had the potential to obtain nuclear
material and build "some kind of dirty bomb."
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- "Our concern is you can actually get the stuff,"
said Michael Chandler, the British expert who heads the monitoring group.
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- The conversations related by Azim Mahmood confirm bin
Laden's nuclear ambitions. They also offer a glimpse at the nexus of science
and conservative Islam at a high level in Pakistan, one of the world's
newest nuclear powers along with neighbouring India.
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- Azim Mahmood said his father met bin Laden in Afghanistan
several times, "and definitely this question of building a nuclear
bomb came up."
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- The father was detained in November 2001, questioned
and freed in February, but has to carry a mobile phone at all times so
Pakistani intelligence can track his movements, the son said.
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- He said his father's American interrogators were particularly
intrigued by one of his books, Doomsday and Life After Death, and wanted
to know whether it meant he had some kind of inside knowledge of what Al
Qaeda was planning.
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- Mahmood first met bin Laden in 2000 while visiting Afghanistan
to build a school, the son said. He wanted to help the Taliban, because
he was angry at the international criticism of the regime's brand of Islam,
the son recalled.
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- "My father shared the Taliban thinking. He liked
their system of government. He wanted to help them."
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- When bin Laden learned a nuclear scientist was in Kabul,
he sent an Al Qaeda operative, Abu Bilal, to Pakistani's hotel to arrange
a meeting, the son said.
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- "My father went to meet him and he said, 'Why don't
you come and help us build these things?' " Azim Mahmood said, adding
that the two men met several times in the Afghan capital and the discussion
invariably returned to nuclear weapons.
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- The Al Qaeda leader wanted a nuclear device, Azim Mahmood
said. "Al Qaeda also wanted a person who could train their people,
and who could get them enriched material for their weapons."
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- In a separate interview, a former senior Taliban official
said bin Laden was trying to obtain nuclear materials, but he could not
say whether the Al Qaeda leader succeeded.
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- Azim Mahmood said his father was uncertain what nuclear
material, if any, Al Qaeda possessed.
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- "At one meeting they brought a box, a thing that
someone had sold to them for a huge amount of money, but my father laughed
and said it was nothing," he said.(ANI)
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- Copyright © 2001 ANI-Asian News International. All
rights reserved.
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