Citing unnamed intelligence officials, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday al-Qaida, which is based in Pakistan's restive North West Frontier Province tribal areas, is known to be trying to obtain nuclear technology for use against the West.

Security officials reportedly say political instability in Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf was forced to resign in a corruption scandal, will help al-Qaida and the Pakstani Taliban in their aims to a develop a bomb in which radioactive material is placed inside a conventional explosive.

"Islamist militant groups want to carry out terror attacks on a massive scale, and there is no better way for them to achieve that objective than to develop some form of primitive nuclear device," an unnamed senior U.S. security official told the Telegraph.

The newspaper says there is growing concern among Western intelligence circles that Islamic terror groups will gain enough nuclear know-how from sympathetic Pakistani military officials to eventually construct a dirty bomb.