ISLAMABAD, March 10: Federal Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on Thursday that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan had provided centrifuges to Iran.

“He had given centrifuges to Iran in his individual capacity and the government of Pakistan had nothing to do with it,” the minister said in response to a question at a seminar here.

Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons.

“He gave them from the black market, and the Pakistan government was not involved,” the minister added.

The minister said this was duly acknowledged that Dr Khan was involved in proliferation at the individual level but added the government would not hand him over to any other country.

“Whatever we have told in this case, it should be duly accepted and acknowledged,” Mr Ahmed said.

He emphasized that the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme should be settled through dialogue instead of going for any extreme step.

Iran is a bigger country than Iraq and it is ‘our neighbour’, the minister said, expressing the hope that a sane decision based on a futuristic approach would be taken in the case of Iran.

Recalling developments in the wake of 9/11 attacks, Mr Ahmed said that keeping the country’s interests supreme, President Gen Pervez Musharraf had taken right and courageous decisions.

US PRESSURE: The information about Dr Khan giving Iran centrifuges to Iran has come at a time when Washington is mounting pressure on Tehran to give up its alleged nuclear weapons programme which the latter insists is for peaceful purposes.

A foreign ministry official in Islamabad said information about transfer of nuclear technology to Iran was not new.

“This is not new information. We have said earlier that the illicit transfer of information and technology to Iran came through international black market,” a foreign ministry official said.

“A network of these black marketeers was identified and dismantled after thorough investigations,” said the official.

The official said they came across the information that Dr Khan had provided ‘outdated’ centrifuges to Iran during his interrogation.

As suspected weapons programmes around the world come under scrutiny, Pakistan has said its nuclear proliferation probe has not been closed and it would investigate any new information.

Officials in Islamabad have repeatedly maintained that they would not allow any foreign country or agency to interrogate the nuclear scientist despite foreign pressure.

“We have refused direct interrogations by anyone. The reason is national sensitivity,” Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said last month in Tokyo.—Agencies