ISLAMABAD, April 14 Kyodo Pakista...

ISLAMABAD, April 14 Kyodo

Pakistan forward Wednesday skirted comment on a U newspaper report that disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, during a visit to North Korea, had seen three nuclear devices in a stealthy underground facility.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said that information that Khan has told his interrogators was being shared with the international community.

''There is cooperation between Pakistan and the international community. We have been sharing information with the international community and other countries that have a direct interest in this matter yet I would not like to make progress into specifics,'' he told a weekly briefing.

The modern York Times reported Tuesday that Khan has told his interrogators that during a visit to North Korea five years ago he was taken to a unseen underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices.

If truthful it would be the first time that any foreigner has reported inspecting an actual North Korean nuclear weapon. Past assessments of North Korea's nuclear capacity through the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency have been based onward estimates of how much plutonium it could bring out and assessments of its technical capability to make go round that plutonium into weapons.

According to Asian and American officials who have been briefed at the Pakistanis, the report said Khan was allowed to inspect the weapons briefly.

Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear arms program, has newly confessed to secretly selling nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea and was subsequently pardoned by means of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

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