MANAMA, Bahrain: A Bahraini minister took questions from members of parliament from the Gulf state's Shiite majority this week over allegations he had tried to alter the country's sectarian balance, a leading MP said.

Members of the parliamentary services committee were able to quiz Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Ahmed bin Attiyatallah al-Khalifa, who heads the archipelago's Central Statistics Office, the committee's chairman Ali Ahmed said.

Ahmed, himself a Sunni, gave few details about the proceedings.

The Shiite MPs who had requested the minister's appearance "made their comments and then the minister was allowed to give his response and make clarifications," he said.

Shiite opposition MPs accuse the Sunni authorities of manipulating Bahrain's confessional make-up by naturalising large numbers of Sunnis.

Last month Shiite MP Khalil Marzuq said that the country's citizen population had leapt from 750,000 to more than a million in just a few years in what he charged was an attempt at demographic engineering.

In 2001, Bahrain had a population of 650,604 residents, 405,667 of them citizens, according to census figures.

The Central Statistics Office which the minister heads now gives population figures on its website of 1,046,814 residents, 529,446 of them citizens, as of December 2007.