Thursday, August 10 2006 10:36 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation has said 'energetic' efforts were being made to track down the 11 'missing' Egyptian students who entered the country last month but failed to report for their classes at Montana University.

The agency also said it will also to get to the bottom of why they are in the country. Six other Egyptian students who were granted visas to the same school have shown up.

The FBI and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are trying to determine what happened to 11 student who arrived at New York's JFK International Airport but have not yet shown up at Montana State University where they were registered to study english and other academic courses.

"What I can tell you is just the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have said that they're attempting to locate all of the Egyptian students that arrived and determine not only, obviously, their whereabouts, but their reason for being here," the Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said.

Ruling out any immediate, he said, "There's no indication that there's any threat associated with their presence. But there's an active effort, energetic effort, to identify where they are."

Asked if there was no official concern why a 'Be On Look Out' notice was issued, McNulty argued that it was the "prudent" thing to do.

The case of the missing students from Egypt has attracted widespread attention and focus of the intelligence and enforcement communities for the reason that some of the terrorists who executed the 9/11 attack entered the United States at one time on student visas.