By
Asif Farooqi, IOL Pakistan correspondent
ISLAMABAD,
December 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Senior Pakistani
foreign ministry officials were questioned by a high ranking U.S.
security officer in Islamabad on Wednesday, December 4, about
Pakistan’s alleged nuclear links with North Korea, well placed
government sources told Islamonline.
According
to these sources, the visiting U.S. deputy national security advisor
Stephen Hadley in his meetings with senior Pakistan foreign ministry
officials heard Pakistan point of view on its reported cooperation
with Korea for developing its nuclear arsenal.
U.S.
officials and newspapers have been reporting over the last few weeks
that Pakistan has been supporting North Korea in the development of
nuclear weapons in exchange for the Korean missile system which
Pakistan bought some year ago.
News
reports also suggested that Pak-Korean secret cooperation has been
going on for years and until September 2002.
Pakistani
denials on this issues were not taken seriously by the U.S.
administration. Last week the U.S. State Department warned Pakistan of
“consequences” of this cooperation with a state which the U.S.
counts among ‘axis of evils’.
However,
in Wednesday’s meeting, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar told
the visiting U.S. dignitary that his country was being made target of
false propaganda.
There
was no official word on the contents of this hour-long meeting.
However it is believed that prospects of Pakistan’s future
cooperation in the war on terror were also discussed in the backdrop
of the anti-U.S. religious alliance’s huge electoral victory in the
province of NWFP which borders with Afghanistan.
