Saturday, August 20 2005 13:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: Terror outfit al Qaeda is paying nuclear scientists from Russia and Pakistan to maintain its existing nuclear arsenal and assemble additional weapons, claims a forthcoming book by former FBI consultant.

Quoting documents purportedly seized in Afghanistan, the author Paul Williams said the terror group also plans to assemble its own nuclear weapons with fissile material it purchased on the black market over a period of ten years.

In the book 'The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organised Crime and the Coming Apocalypse," he contends that Al Qaeda has already planted in the United States, nuclear weapons it obtained from the Soviet Union.

"It has obtained 40 of them from the Soviet Union and these include suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads," he said.

In addition to capability to detonate its own nuclear weapons, also smuggled through criminal gangs across the Mexican border and already planted in the U.S., Williams' book said there was evidence to suggest that al Qaeda was paying former Russian special forces Spetznaz to assist them in locating nuclear weapons formerly concealed inside the United States by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.