November 7, 2003	Friday	Ramazan 11, 1424

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SEOUL, Nov 6: President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday denied any technological ties between Islamabad and North Korea to help that country’s nuclear weapons drive.

“Such cooperation (between North Korea and Pakistan) did not exist in the past and will never be in the future,” Gen Musharraf said at a summit with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun.

The Pakistani leader expressed support for Seoul’s push for a peaceful resolution of the year-long nuclear crisis, according to Roh’s office.

Pakistan has been repeatedly accused of aiding Pyongyang’s atomic ambitions in return for help with Islamabad’s own missile development.

President Musharraf, however, denounced such charges as a smear campaign.

“I would like to assure you that all reports linking Pakistan to North Korea’s nuclear programme are totally incorrect and malicious in nature,” he said in an interview with the Korea Herald newspaper.

The summit, the first between the two leaders, focused on the nuclear crisis and bilateral relations, especially trade, South Korean officials said.

Islamabad wants to promote Korean investment in Pakistan and is hoping to boost bilateral trade, currently worth around 700 million dollars annually, to five billion dollars over the next five years.

The US request for troops for Iraq was also on the agenda of the summit. Washington has asked Islamabad and Seoul to dispatch combat troop to help maintain security in post-war Iraq. Seoul has agreed without specifying numbers.

“We are reluctant to agree,” said a Pakistani diplomat based here. “But the summit between the two presidents might help us with the decision.”

President Musharraf earlier described the standoff between Pyongyang and Washington as a “grave crisis” and urged North Korea to show restraint and avoid escalating tension.

Earlier, he told a South Korean security think tank that reports that Islamabad had traded its nuclear know-how for Pyongyang’s missile technology were “aspersions cast against my country”.

“I have investigated the past and I found no trace of any proliferation,” he said.

“Let me assure and guarantee this house that there will never be any proliferation and there will never be a transfer of technology in the future,” Gen Musharraf said.

He earlier told South Korean media that Pakistan had in the past had military cooperation with North Korea and had bought missiles from Pyongyang, but that had stopped.

“We have had relations and defence cooperation with North Korea and we have bought surface-to-air missiles in the past because of a threat to us. But now we produce ourselves,” he told the English-language Korea Times.

In an interview with the Korea Herald, President Musharraf voiced support for six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan aimed at halting North Korea’s nuclear arms programme.

“We are extremely concerned about the escalation of nuclear tension on the Korean Peninsula,” he told the Herald.

Pakistan, which has about 5,000 guest workers in South Korea, also hoped to draw more South Korean investment in the oil, gas and telecommunications sectors, he said.—Agencies