US paper's report rejected

Published November 27, 2004

ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: The Foreign Office on Friday rejected US claims that scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had supplied Iran with detailed nuclear weapons plans. "Such allegations are baseless," Foreign Office spokesperson Masood Khan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

The rejection follows a report in the New York Times quoting a Central Intelligence Agency document which says that the designs leaked by Dr Khan to Iran were more significant than previously suspected.

The spokesman said that Pakistan had received no such communication from the CIA or any other organization on the issue. He described the report as a "strange web-based on flimsy evidence".

He said statements attributed to unnamed officials or the former CIA director did not make up for the writer's "unsubstantiated claims" about supply of a weapon's design to Iran.

"Pakistan has conducted an inquiry to unearth an illicit network of international black marketers, dismantled it and shared the results of the inquiry," he said. -dpa