WASHINGTON, Jan 9: The United States said on Thursday Islamabad had assured Washington that it had not transferred nuclear technology to any of the three nations that were described as “the axis of evil” by President George W. Bush.

A report published this week in many American newspapers suggested that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan had shared nuclear technology with North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

The US State Department, while talking to Dawn, refused to talk “specifically” about Dr Khan but said it had received assurances from Pakistan that it was not transferring nuclear technology to any nation.

“We talked to Pakistan about transfers of nuclear technology,” a State Department official told Dawn. “Pakistan recognizes the seriousness of any kind of proliferation activity involving North Korea,” he added.

The official said that US Secretary of State Colin Powell had talked about this issue in Mexico City back in November, when the US media first reported that Pakistan had assisted North Korea in its nuclear programme.

“Secretary Powell said at that time that he had had very specific conversations with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf in recent months in which President Musharraf assured us that Pakistan was not participating in any activity of that nature,” the official said.

The US media reported that in 1986, Pakistan and Iran had signed a nuclear cooperation agreement after Dr Khan visited Bushehr, a nuclear power plant that Teheran is building with Russian help.

Dr Khan’s name also appeared in a letter offering to ‘manufacture a nuclear weapon’ for Iraq leader Saddam Hussein, the report said.

But most of the report focused on Pakistan’s alleged relations with North Korea, claiming that Islamabad shared nuclear technology with Pyongyang in return for North Korean missiles, which were inducted into the Pakistani arsenal as Ghauri series of missiles.