January 13, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 9, 1423

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DUBAI, Jan 12: President Gen Pervez Musharraf again denied that Islamabad had passed on nuclear technology to North Korea, in an interview with the Dubai-based Arabic television channel MBC.

“I guarantee 400 per cent that nothing has taken place between us and North Korea,” Musharraf said in the interview to be broadcast on Monday, a transcript of which was obtained by AFP on Sunday.

He said recent press reports alleging Pakistan aided North Korea’s nuclear programme by providing gas centrifuges to make weapons-grade enriched uranium in return for ballistic missile parts were part of a “hostile and suspicious campaign” aimed at “blackening the image of Pakistan and its scientists.

“No transfer of nuclear technology (to N. Korea) has taken place in the past and it will not happen in the future,” Musharraf said, saying that Islamabad respected its undertakings not to export such technology.

Pakistan is not a signatory to the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but it has made repeated commitments to the United Nations not to share its nuclear technology with other states.

Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said on Dec 29 that a sample gas centrifuge used to enrich uranium necessary to produce nuclear weapons was transported by special flight from Islamabad in the coffin of the murdered wife of a North Korean diplomat.

On Jan 8 Musharraf called reports of technology sharing “a sinister smear campaign... by hostile lobbies who have always been inimical to Pakistan’s status as a nuclear power.”—AFP