SINGAPORE, Feb 7: Pakistan's push to rebuild links with the international debt market will not be derailed by the nuclear scandal involving national hero Abdul Qadeer Khan, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Saturday.

Mr Aziz said the scandal had its roots in the early 1990s involving a network of people from many countries, and believed Mr Khan had acted independently of the Pakistan government.

"We have checked with the investor base and people who really know Pakistan know that nothing has changed on the ground, except that certain people have now been linked to events that took place many, many years ago," Mr Aziz said.

He was in Singapore for a roadshow to promote the launch this week of an expected $500 million, five-year Eurobonds, which marks Pakistan's first international debt issue since being slapped with sanctions for conducting nuclear tests in mid-1998.

"We are coming back really not because we need the liquidity," he said.

"In fact the country has virtually no commercial short-term debt, no bubbles or bulges waiting out there, unlike other countries which normally come in with a bond issue."

Mr Aziz said the bond deal followed years of economic and political reform in Pakistan, which had transformed the economy and would deliver growth exceeding 5.3 per cent this year, up from 5.1 per cent in the year to June 30, 2003.

He said the budget deficit was expected to come down to around four per cent of gross domestic product.-Reuters