DAVOS, Jan 24: The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, said on Saturday the agency was working with Pakistan to trace and cripple a sophisticated underworld thought to be helping countries with clandestine nuclear weapons programmes.

"We are working with Pakistan... to come to the bottom of this ring of proliferators," Mr ElBaradei told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"I hope we should be able in the next few weeks to come to grips with the extent and nature of that ring and dry it up as soon as possible," he added.

ElBaradei said on Thursday anti-proliferation efforts were under great stress because of what he called a black-market network that was trading in weapons technology.

"What we are seeing is a very sophisticated network of black-market proliferators, people who are selling equipment, material underground...We're still very much in the process of investigating this network."

President Musharraf said similar allegations had been made against European individuals and countries, adding that any Pakistanis found to be involved would be treated as "anti-state elements". "The Pakistani government has never, and will never proliferate," he said in Davos.-Reuters