NEW YORK. June 15: American and international investigators have claimed that they have found electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon belonging to the nuclear smuggling network run by A.Q. Khan, according to the New York Times.

However, the newspaper said on Sunday that investigators had not been able to determine whether or not the blueprints were actually sold to the countries buying information from the smuggling ring.

Investigators alleged that trafficking in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design was particularly alarming because if a country or group obtained it, the time needed to build a reliable weapon would be reduced significantly.

In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials said the design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when the country agreed to cap its nuclear programme, according to the newspaper.