Islamic Bomb Update. “Pakistan rejects report on N-help to Saudis,” from AFP:
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday rejected as “fabricated” a German magazine report that said Saudi Arabia was working secretly on a nuclear programme with help from Pakistani experts.
“It is a fabricated story and motivated by vicious intentions,” Foreign Office Spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
Citing Western security sources, German magazine Cicero in its latest edition, says that during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia in aircraft sponsored by the oil-rich kingdom.
Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them took the opportunity to “disappear” from their hotel rooms, sometimes for up to three weeks, German security expert Udo Ulfkotte told the magazine.
According to Western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan. The latest issue of Cicero, which will appear on newsstands on Thursday, also quoted US military analyst John Pike as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons “because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear programme”.
Earlier reports belying this denial:
Saudia Arabia working on secret nuclear program with Pakistan help – report