London: A Pakistani scientist approached Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for nuclear weapon designs and help in procuring bomb components soon after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, document found by United Nations weapons inspectors has revealed raising new concerns about Pakistan's role in the proliferation of nuclear technology.

It follows allegations that Islamabad helped North Korea to develop a nuclear bomb and that Pakistani nuclear scientists met Osama bin Laden and Taleban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar in Afghanistan.

The offer by the Pakistani scientist, found in Iraqi archives, was made in October 1990 as a US-led coalition prepared to repel the August invasion of Kuwait. Iraq had already embarked on a crash programme to develop a nuclear bomb, but told the UN it had not pursued the scientist's offer - a claim UN investigators are inclined to believe, a report in 'The Times' daily said on December 20.

Evidence of contact between the Pakistani scientist and Iraq will only fuel fears that Pakistan is willing to share its technology with so-called "rogue nations".

The document revealing the contact between the scientist and Iraq first came to the attention of UN weapons inspectors after the 1995 defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, General Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of Iraq's secret weapons programme.

After he defected to Jordan, Iraqi officials led UN inspectors to a cache of 1.5 million pages of documents hidden in packing crates at General Kamel's chicken farm in Iraq, the Haider House Farm, in an apparent effort to get rid of incriminating evidence that they assumed he would provide to Western intelligence.

PTI