KARACHI: A four-member technical team of the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) will arrive in Islamabad on Monday (today) to determine whether or not Pakistan should be granted the associate membership of the organisation.

The team, led by CERN`s Director for Research and Scientific Computing Dr Sergio Bertolucci, will remain in the country till Feb 14 and visit universities, scientific organisations and industrial complexes to evaluate the scientific activities being undertaken here.

Pakistan had applied for the membership of the organisation last year.

The Geneva-based CERN, a leading scientific organisation conducting research on high energy particle physics since 1954, has 20 European countries as members and three associate members.

Five countries, including India, have the status of observers in the organisation. Recently, Israel was given the membership of the organisation.

The CERN, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and National Centre for Physics, Islamabad, had signed a protocol for collaboration in 1997 under which a number of projects were taken up by Pakistani scientists and engineers and supplies were made to CERN. The collaboration continues till today.

So far, 120 Pakistani scientists, engineers and students have visited CERN, whereas around 50 scientists and engineers from CERN have visited Pakistan.

`The membership will help increase contracts with CERN which will benefit our industrial sector, human resource development and technology transfer in key areas of radiofrequency (RF) technology, ion beam optics, cryogenics etc,` said a PAEC official.