By Zafar Samdani
LAHORE, March 10: Pakistan has all but ruled out the 'independent analyses' in some other country as demanded by the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) and the Ministry of Agriculture not merely because "there is no provision for such a test in the contract for importing wheat but also because the laboratories where the Australian wheat was tested have state of the art facilities."

A senior official who was associated with the tests on the Australian wheat, dismissed the criticism of Pakistan's facilities for analyzing the shipment told Dawn that the labs where tests were carried out "are comparable with the best such facilities anywhere."

The official, who did no want to be named, told Dawn that Pakistan's findings were supplemented by the research papers of Australian scientists dating to 1998. The papers were downloaded during the analyses. The research did not rule out the presence of karnal bunt in the Australian wheat.

The Australian scientists are said to have argued that the evidence related to fungus on rye crop in wheat fields but that, the official said, confirmed rather than countered Pakistan's conclusions.

Spores from sample extract were shown to the Australian scientists on microscope. That left no doubt whatsoever about the veracity of analyses conducted by Pakistan's scientists.

He said that the best pathologists from all over the country were associated with exercise that was undertaken with the sole intention of ascertaining the quality of the imported wheat.

Meanwhile, a Prime Minister House source said that if ministers or any other senior representatives of the Australian government wished to meet the Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Jamali, they would be accommodated but he did not say if a request had been received so far.

The official said that this was the first time that any food import had been tested in Pakistan. This was done because Pakistan's wheat exports to Iraq and Iran were subjected to strict analyses by these countries when Pakistan exported surplus wheat after the bumper crop of 1999-2000.

He said that after that experience, President General Pervez Musharraf issued instructions that Pakistan should also establish quality laboratories and that were set up in National Agriculture Research Council (NARC) under his personal orders. He asserted that Pakistan's facilities were of the highest level.

Dawn was told that in the past, wheat imports were checked by experts by picking up a handful of grains and subjecting the material to a close personal scrutiny. He said that Australian wheat would not pass even such a test because 'it looked low quality even to the naked eye'.

The DAWN