WASHINGTON, Nov 26: US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday Pakistan had assured him it had not helped North Korea develop its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for missile technology.

Talking to reporters in Washington before flying to Mexico for a two-day visit, Powell said he had warned Pakistan that the United States could reimpose sanctions against Pakistan if it was proved that Islamabad had cooperated with Pyongyang in its nuclear programme.

“In my conversations with President Musharraf in recent months, I have made it clear to him that any, any sort of contact between Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate and would have consequences,” Powell told reporters.

“And President Musharraf has assured me on more than one occasion that there are no further contacts and he guarantees that there are no contacts of the kind that were referred to in the (New York Times) article,” he added.

Pakistan has denied a recent report in the newspaper that Pyongyang supplied Islamabad with missile parts to allow the latter to build a nuclear missile arsenal capable of reaching “every strategic site in India”.

In exchange, Pakistan provided North Korea with many of the designs for gas centrifuges as well as much of the machinery needed to make highly enriched uranium, the Times alleged.

The North Koreans had told US officials last month that they had a secret uranium enrichment project for making nuclear weapons, in violation of a 1994 accord with the United States.

Powell’s assurance has allayed the fears of Pakistani diplomats in Washington who were worried that the recent media tirade over the North Korean issue could have negative consequences for their country.

Senior Pakistani diplomats told Dawn that they had been assured by the Bush administration that so far it had no plan to reimpose sanctions on Pakistan.

There is also no indication that the Republican-led Congress is planning any punitive action against Pakistan either.

“Right now I have nothing presently that has been reported to me that I need to be looking at,” said Powell, when asked about the possibility that Pakistan’s contacts with North Korea could trigger sanctions under US law.

“And with respect to the past, I don’t know of anything that might be going on at the department that is relevant to any sanctions discussion with Congress,” he said.

“President Musharraf understands the seriousness of this issue,” Powell added, stressing that conversations had taken place face-to-face as well as over the telephone.

Agencies add: The United States on Monday refused to directly criticize Pakistan over the North Korea row.

The White House stuck to a formulation which suggested that Washington believed Pakistan had aided North Korea in the past — but had not done so since signing up to President George Bush’s anti-terror campaign.

“I think that Sept 11 changed many things, and a new government, if you will, and Pakistan is not always doing things that they used to do,” said Bush’s spokesman, Ari Fleischer.

“And so, times have, indeed, changed. Not everything that took place years ago gets repeated today,” he said, noting, to support his contention of changed Pakistani behaviour, that Islamabad had dropped its former support for the Taliban.

“What took place (on) Sept 11 changed many things, certain things happened under different governments in Pakistan in a time period not represented by Pakistan today. Events change and so do nations.”

Pakistan’s critics here have complained that the United States has sketched over Pakistan’s alleged aid to North Korea, as well as support for radical anti-India groups, due to its crucial anti-terror role.

The New York Times report on Sunday alleged a Pakistani aircraft arrived in Pyongyang as recently as July to pick up North Korean missile parts — the payoff in what the paper said was a “deadly barter”, raising questions about US-Pakistan relations. “Pakistan’s commitments that it would not export any sensitive technologies to third countries remains unquestionable,” foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.

“Pakistan has a strong export control regime in place. Pakistan’s record in this regard is impeccable.”

Mr Aziz Khan called the report’s allegations “entirely baseless, motivated and malicious”.

Earlier, ISPR spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi dismissed them as “absolutely incorrect”.

“It’s surprising how the New York Times keeps coming up with all these false allegations,” Qureshi said.

The NYT first alleged last month that Pakistan had supplied machinery to North Korea to make weapons-grade uranium — the basis of its recently revealed nuclear arms programme.

Bush branded North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and Iran in January.