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Pak scientist says he never offered to make nuke bombs for Iraq

Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan has described as ''baseless, ill-founded and concocted'' an American magazine report that he offered Iraq to develop a nuclear bomb.

The allegation has been levelled to defame Pakistan and is linked to the test firing of the Ghauri missile, he said.

Dr Khan said he had never been to Iraq and was not even aware of the name of the head of its atomic energy commission.

Stressing that Pakistan was a responsible country, he said it had never offered or sold nuclear technology.

Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman David Kyd confirmed the Newsweek magazine report that his agency is looking into a secret Iraqi memorandum naming Dr Khan as offering to sell nuclear designs.

"We are pursuing leads concerning individuals that were contactable in the pre-Gulf war period regarding Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme,'' Kyd told Associated Press.

Kyd refused further comment, saying: "We will wait for reaction from the person they named in the story.''

Newsweek had said both the Pakistan government and Dr Khan had denied involvement.

An October 1990 memorandum from Iraq's intelligence service to its nuclear weapons directorate mentioned Dr Khan as ready to help Iraq manufacture a nuclear weapon, according to Newsweek.

It was among the documents turned over by Iraq after the 1995 defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Lt General Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's secret weapons programme through the 1980s, the report said.

Iraqi officials reportedly rejected the offer, fearing it was a ruse to entrap them.

UNI

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