Pakistan says nuclear ties with N Korea 'closed'

SEOUL - Pakistan has given South Korea all the information it has about suspected exchanges of nuclear technology with North Korea and considers the issue "a closed chapter", Pakistan's prime minister said.

Pakistan has been at the centre of investigations into a nuclear black market that is suspected of skirting international sanctions and providing sensitive technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

"As regards to any relationship or interaction with North Korea, we have none any more," Shaukat Aziz told a news briefing in Seoul, ahead of meetings with South Korean officials.

"Whatever information we have, we have shared with our friends in South Korea," Aziz said. "This is a closed chapter".

US officials have charged that the nuclear black market network run by disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb program, supplied North Korea with technology to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear bombs.

Although Khan is under house arrest, neither US officials nor inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been allowed to question him on the extent of the nuclear black market.

The issue is critical because the United States has demanded at six-country talks that North Korea dismantle all of its nuclear activities, including the uranium enrichment program.

North Korea has denied having any such program.

In a report on its official KCNA news agency on September 13, Pyongyang called Washington's charges about the uranium program "false propaganda" and "a very insolent act seeking a sinister political purpose".

The chief US envoy to the North Korean nuclear talks Christopher Hill said on Wednesday Pyongyang needed to come clean on all of its nuclear programs which officials have said would include its declared plutonium-based program and the suspected HEU program.

The next round of talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States is scheduled for November, with envoys looking to draw up a road map for Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear programs in return for aid, security guarantees and increased diplomatic recognition.

Aziz reiterated that Pakistan, the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons, was opposed to the use of force against Iran to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program.

Iran threatened on Tuesday to use trade to punish countries that voted to report it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, after Tehran failed to convince the world its nuclear program was peaceful.

"We also believe that the current situation vis a vis Iran and the nuclear program ought to be handled through the IAEA and ought to be handled in a way which settles the matter peacefully," Aziz said.

- REUTERS