Authorities in Pakistan are questioning eight officials from its nuclear weapons program — including the personal assistant to the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and two retired brigadiers — regarding allegations that nuclear weapons technology was shared with Iran, the government's information minister said Sunday.

The minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, did not provide further details of the interrogations or say when they had begun. But the disclosure came a day after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said the country must convince the world that Pakistan is not a proliferator of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Ahmed identified one of those questioned as a personal assistant to Abdul Qadeer Khan, creator of Pakistan's first nuclear bomb. He said authorities were also questioning a retired brigadier who is the former head of security at the country's main nuclear weapons site, the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, and one other retired brigadier.

Pakistan began an inquiry into its nuclear program in late December after American intelligence officials and the United Nations nuclear agency said Iranian officials disclosed that Pakistanis were among middlemen who the Iranians said had aided Iran's nuclear weapons program. American intelligence officials also said they believed that Pakistan had traded nuclear technology to North Korea in exchange for missile technology. The Americans further said Pakistan was the source for designs of centrifuges used by Libya's recently disclosed nuclear program.

Pakistani officials have said that no nuclear technology was transferred to Libya and that no nuclear technology is currently being transferred to North Korea. Pakistani officials have conceded the possibility that individuals motivated by personal ambition or greed may have sold nuclear technology to Iran between 1987 and 1993.

The wife of Maj. Islam Ul Haq, the personal assistant to Dr. Khan, said Dr. Khan told her that the major had been detained by two uniformed intelligence agents on Saturday night while the two men were eating dinner at Dr. Khan's house, The Associated Press reported. Major Haq is a director at the Khan Research Laboratories.

Telephone calls to Ms. Islam's home, as well as to Dr. Khan's, were not answered Sunday night.

For the past decade, Dr. Khan has been lionized as a national hero. The reported detention of his top aide, in his own home, comes as domestic criticism of the investigation rises.

Since three scientists were detained for questioning in December, Pakistani analysts, opposition politicians and relatives of the scientists have scoffed at the suggestion that they could have transferred such sensitive technology without the government's knowledge.

Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is considered the country's most precious asset and is tightly guarded by the military, which dominates the country.

In an interview this week, relatives of one scientist who has been in detention for more than a month, Farooq Muhammad, bitterly accused the government of using low-level scientists as scapegoats to appease the United States. They said that they did not believe the American charges of Pakistani proliferation and that they feared that Mr. Muhammad was in American custody.

"Might is right," said Maher Aamir, the scientist's nephew. "It's all to praise or make happy the U.S.A. by framing innocent people."

Officials at the American Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment. Pakistani officials said Dr. Farooq was in Pakistan.

Senior Pakistani government officials emphasized that no proof of wrongdoing had been discovered. Last week, Iranian and Libyan officials said they had received no nuclear assistance from Pakistan.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for Pakistan's military, said Sunday that the investigation was continuing and "anyone who has broken the law will be held accountable."

In late December, officials said Dr. Khan himself had been questioned, but was not in detention. Nearly all those questioned so far have been his close aides.

A senior Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said Dr. Khan should be the focus of any inquiry. "It's completely impossible for there to have been any proliferation activities without A. Q. Khan's knowledge," the diplomat said. "That much is clear."

But Pakistani analysts said it would be political suicide for General Musharraf to detain or prosecute Dr. Khan. Tariq Rahman, a professor at Quaid-e-Azam University, said the public would regard it as an unacceptable bid " to destroy Pakistan's nuclear scientists and its nuclear weapons."

Opposition political groups have dismissed the American charges as false claims aimed at weakening the world's only nuclear-armed Muslim country.

S. A. Shamsi, a spokesman for a coalition of hard-line religious parties that holds the third largest number of seats in Parliament, criticized the government for what he called capitulation to American pressure. "Our government is doing things that others are demanding," he said Sunday.

Questions regarding nuclear technology and Pakistan continue to percolate.

On Jan. 2, the police in Colorado arrested Asher Karni, an Israeli businessman who lives in South Africa, on charges of trying illegally to export to Pakistan triggering devices that could be used in nuclear weapons. American officials have said the Pakistani government may have been involved.

Mr. Karni planned to use front companies to ship the switches to South Africa, then to the United Arab Emirates and ultimately on to a company in Islamabad, federal law enforcement officials charged. Court papers said the recipient in Pakistan was to have been a company called Pakland PME. The company's Web site says its sells dozens of kinds of electrical equipment, including oscilloscopes and transformers. It lists an office address in downtown Islamabad, roughly a mile from the Parliament building.

This weekend, calls to the telephone number listed by the company went unanswered.

Workers in the office building said they had never heard of such a company.

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