Islamabad, Feb 02: Pakistan's hardline Islamist alliance, Muthahida Majlis Amal, has called a general strike on February 6 to protest investigations into alleged proliferation by the country's nuclear scientists and increasing co-operation between the US and Pakistan. Acting President of MMA and chief of Pakistan Jamat-e-Islamim, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, said the alliance wanted people to observe a general strike on February 6 to show their protest against investigations into the scientists' activities as well as the likelihood of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) troops beginning crackdown in Pakistan's tribal areas to hunt Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

MMA wanted the nuclear scientists to be tried in public so that may have the opportunity to "disclose the hidden faces behind the game," he told reporters in Lahore last night. "Pakistan has not committed a crime or sin by transferring nuclear technology to other countries because it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)," Ahmad added.

He warned President Pervez Musharraf that "insulting" the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, would bring the "same treatment upon himself".

"Musharraf has become America's puppet and Prime Minister (Zafarullah Khan) Jamali should part ways with him. General Musharraf cannot be part of a democratic system because he has the bad habit of dictatorship," he said. Ahmad also claimed NATO forces had begun to reach Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. "If Pakistani forces cooperate with them, the MMA would consider this an attack on Pakistan," he said. Bureau Report