During his press conference at the Jakarta summit, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland took time to address a rumour -- apparently rife in the Arab world -- that the Boxing Day earthquake had been triggered by an Indian nuclear experiment.

While conspiracy theories generally abound in the wake of any large scale disaster, this one appears to have sprung from the Arab press -- or, at least, to have been given credibility by it.

Israeli news outlets, which keep close tabs on Arab language news outlets, have reported sightings of the story in Arab newspapers.

Both the Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva report that a prominent Egyptian weekly -- identified variously as Al-Osboa and Al-Usbu -- claims that India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has lately received sophisticated nuclear technology from the United States and Israel.

The paper claims, according to these reports, that India has been experimenting with this technology -- and other nuclear devices -- in the region of the Indian Ocean known as 'the Fire Belt,' which housed the epicenter of the earthquake.