KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 24: Malaysia on Tuesday brushed off suggestions that the United States might impose sanctions over a local company's role in the nuclear weapons black market, and confirmed that a confessed middleman was free to leave the country.

"I don't think the US will go to that extent of imposing sanctions because of this one small incident," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a news conference.

He was responding to a report in Newsweek magazine that Washington was contemplating sanctions after a company owned by his son was accused of manufacturing uranium-enrichment centrifuge parts for Libya.

A probe by Malaysian police has cleared the company, Scomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE), accepting its explanation that it did not know what the parts were for or that they were headed for Libya. -AFP