WASHINGTON, April 13: Pakistan's nuclear bomb never had an Islamic character, says the country's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto whose father first coined the term, 'Islamic bomb'.

"As far as I recall he did not call it an Islamic bomb when he launched the nuclear programme in 1974," said Ms Bhutto in a letter to a US news agency, United Press International.

He called it an Islamic bomb some time in 1978 or 1979 from the death cell. It was here that he wrote for the first time that the Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations had a nuclear bomb and that he had made one for the Islamic world," she writes.

Bhutto was invited by UPI to comment on some of the issues circulating in the US media about Pakistan's nuclear programme. The report sent to her for comments alleged that Libyan and Iranian governments had financed Pakistan's nuclear programme, offering hundreds of millions of dollars.

The report also claimed that senior Pakistani military and civilian officials had pocketed some of the money offered for the programme while some was used for making the bomb as well.

Ms Bhutto tackles all these issues with the knowledge allowed to a prime minister and convincingly answers some of the allegations, particularly those levelled against her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Throughout the letter, she emphasizes that Pakistan's bomb was never an Islamic bomb and that no Muslim country financed the country's nuclear programme.

Her long letter trails the history of the bomb from the day her father decided to respond to India's first nuclear test in 1974 and covers some of the events she saw or noticed both as prime minister and a leader of the opposition.

"I would disagree with the conclusion that Muslim countries funded the nuclear programme during my father's tenure. Pakistan did acquire nuclear capability. Is it really relevant how Pakistan did that now that it has it," asks Ms Bhutto.

She said that in 1989, some scientists of the former Soviet Union did approach her government offering to sell uranium to Pakistan but the government turned down the offer.

She refused to confirm a media report that Gen (retd) Aslam Beg had informed Nawaz Sharif, when he was the prime minister, of a deal to sell nuclear technology to Iran for an additional $12 billion. She said she did not know anything about this deal because she was not in the government then.

Ms Bhutto said that in 1979 "a junior former bureaucrat from the ministry of information" told the British Panorama television show that the Libyans had funded Pakistan's nuclear programme. "That was untrue and the source, as a ministry of information junior officer, had no access to the nuclear committee or its programme," she said.

"I understood that this was deliberately leaked by Gen Ziaul Huq because they wanted to turn the United States off the Bhutto family by citing Libyan connections."

She said her father did indeed get a lot of financial support from the Muslim countries but this was unconnected to the nuclear programme. Z.A. Bhutto, she said, started Pakistan's nuclear programme after India's 1974 test with an aim to "maintain parity with India by making a bomb too".

"As far as I recall he did not call it an Islamic Bomb (in 1974). At no time did my father seek financing of the bomb from any Muslim country or shared with them that he wished to make a nuclear bomb.

He called it an Islamic bomb some time in 1978 or 1979 from the death cell. It was here that he wrote for the first time that the Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations had a nuclear bomb and that he had made one for the Islamic world."

Ms Bhutto recalled that Col. Qadhafi attended the 1974 Islamic Summit her father had hosted in Lahore but that Libyan leader was never asked to "financially support the nuclear programme nor taken into confidence about it."