Pakistan's Khan denies he's source of weapon design

By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's disgraced top nuclear scientist denied on Tuesday that he was the source of sophisticated warhead designs found on the computers of Swiss smugglers.

A nuclear watchdog's report that the designs were found on the smugglers' computers has spurred fears in the United States and elsewhere that atomic secrets may be quickly spreading.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said in a report released this week that Swiss investigators had found the encrypted designs in 2004 on the computers of three Swiss smugglers associated with Abul Qadeer Khan, who headed work on Pakistan's nuclear programme.

But Khan, who has been kept under house arrest in Islamabad

since 2004, denied that the designs came from him.

"It's pure lies and nonsense. It's part of America's campaign to pressure Pakistan," Khan told Reuters by telephone.

Still admired by many Pakistanis as the father of the country's atomic bomb, Khan confessed on television in early 2004 to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

But in recent interviews he has recanted, saying that he only took the blame in return for assurances by President Pervez Musharraf's government that were never honoured.