A top US official charged with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons met today with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose son owns a company which has been embroiled in the nuclear black market scandal, sources said.

The meeting between US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Nonproliferation, John Stern Wolf, and Abdullah was not immediately acknowledged by the premier's aides.

A source involved with Wolf's visit told AFP , however, that Wolf had in fact met Abdullah this morning.

The nuclear issue is a sensitive one here, with opposition parties using it as a campaign topic ahead of elections expected within a month, while the government has accused Washington of unfairly targeting Malaysia.

The government initially announced that Wolf would meet Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar and that a news conference would be held, but later issued a statement cancelling the briefing without elaborating.

Embassy tight-lipped

The US embassy also remained tight-lipped about Wolf's programme, saying only that he was "meeting with senior government officials, discussing ways to increase the existing cooperation between the two countries, specifically on non-proliferation".

Wolf would "review several issues that are under consideration at the United Nations and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and provide some information to Malaysians and discuss the proliferation security initiative and export controls," spokesman Frank Whittaker told AFP .

The United States wants Malaysia to beef up its export controls after the company owned by Abdullah's son Kamaluddin admitted manufacturing centrifuge parts seized on a ship bound for Libya, where they were allegedly to be used in its nuclear weapons programme.

The company, Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope), said it had been misled about the purpose and destination of the parts and has been cleared of any wrongdoing by a Malaysian police investigation.

The Malaysian government has lodged a formal protest over remarks by US President George W Bush linking Malaysia to the black market network run by Pakistan's disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has admitted selling nuclear secrets.

It says comapnies and individuals in many other countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been implicated wittingly or unwittingly in the scandal but only Malaysia has been singled out.

No public call for Tahir's arrest

Bush also focused attention on a Sri Lankan businessman living in Malaysia, BSA Tahir, whom he described as Khan's "chief financial officer and money launderer".

Tahir placed the order for the parts with Scope and has been questioned by Malaysian police but not arrested, with the government saying he had not broken any laws.

There has been no call from Washington, at least publicly, for Tahir's arrest.

Malaysia is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which governs the movement of materials which can be used to make atomic bombs, such as uranium, but has not signed an additional protocol covering nuclear-related parts.

Foreign Minister Syed Hamid said today that Malaysia did not see the need to sign the protocol "at present", the official Bernama news agency reported.

He said that as a signatory to the treaty the country had acted on its responsibility to the best of its ability. - AFP