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ISLAMABAD, Nov 27 (AFP) - Pakistani authorities have again detained two retired nuclear scientists after interrogating them last month over their alleged links with Afghanistan's Taliban regime, an official said Tuesday.

"They are under detention," military spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi told reporters.

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a former project director in Pakistan's nuclear programme in the lead-up to the nation's nuclear tests in 1998, was held for questioning in October along with another retired nuclear scientist, Abdul Majid.

Mahmood, after retiring from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission three years ago, had set up a group that was engaged in land development and other relief work in Afghanistan.

Officials said Mahmood, who was kept in "protective custody" for a week, was cleared on October 30 after an initial probe into his group's activities.

"The investigation found his organisation had been engaged in purely humanitarian work and there is no cause for any concern or reason to have doubts about the nuclear aspects," they said.

The scientist was taken ill and hospitalised after his release.

Qureshi said the new detention was for further interrogation but he declined to elaborate.

"I am not privy to any details of the investigations."

He said when the authorities had freed the two nuclear experts, "we told them that they should stay in contact with us so that when we need them we can call them for questioning."

The hardline Taliban militia is currently under heavy US military attack for harbouring alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.

Bin Laden, whom Washington accuses of having masterminded the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, claimed in an interview with a Pakistani newspaper this month that his group had nuclear and chemical weapons and was prepared to use them.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told reporters at the United Nations earlier this month that he had "no such information" that bin Laden had the capability either to produce or store nuclear weapons.

"Purely on judgement, I can't imagine that he is having nuclear weapons," Musharraf said. 

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