NEW YORK, Feb 9: President Pervez Musharraf has said that Pakistan has put a stop to the covert export of nuclear weapons' technology, and assured that "it will never happen again".

In an interview with the NBC TV network on Sunday, the president said: "Please let it not be thought that the same proliferation activity will start again."

Asked whether pardoning Dr A. Q. Khan was a whitewash or whether he agreed with the perception that a deal had been struck with the scientist, the president said: "I disagree with it absolutely. One must understand reality.

There's an international perception. There's a domestic perception. There's a person involved who's a hero because of what he's done for us. He's a hero - he was a hero even for me.

And here's a person who's brought the deterrence - given us deterrence, potential in the unconventional field. So this certainly is - is a very, very sensitive issue.

Now, he did something that could hurt the nation. I was in a dilemma, certainly. The dilemma is: he's a great man, he's a hero, and he's a hero of every individual in the street. Yet he has done something which could bring harm to the nation. Now how do I deal with it? We had to handle it very carefully."

Asked whether he would oppose the spring offensive planned by the Pentagon in Afghanistan, Mr Musharraf said: "No, I would support it. I have all along been saying that there is a requirement of more force. I have all along been saying that there's a vacuum in Afghanistan which we have to fill in the countryside. So I'm for increasing strength there. That is the way forward."

However, he underscored that the American operation had to be on the Afghan side of the border, saying that any operation inside Pakistan "is not required".

"Here is no, the enemy, I am calling the Al Qaeda or the Taliban abettors; they are not in such strength that a whole operation, a massive operation has to be launched. There are people, there are groups hiding in small numbers. And we have developed a very effective quick reaction force. A mobile, hard-hitting, quick reaction force. So that is what is required, and we are capable of doing all of that," Gen Musharraf noted.

SAFETY OF N-ARSENAL: Groups like Al Qaeda had obtained neither nuclear weapons nor know-how from Pakistan, despite a proliferation scandal linking a top scientist with Libya, Iran and North Korea, an official said on Monday in Rawalpindi, according to a Reuters' report.

"We exclude the possibility," Inter-Services Public Relations chief Major-Gen Shaukat Sultan said when asked if Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan's leaked nuclear technology and hardware could have reached groups like Al Qaeda.

"It has not come out of our investigations, or any other intelligence agency. There has been no such hint," he maintained. Meanwhile, an AFP report quoted a military spokesman in Islamabad as having insisted that the nuclear arsenal was in safe hands and denied that Islamabad was working with Washington to stop weapons falling into extremists' control.

"Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and is fully capable of defending its assets without any outside help," the spokesman said. The National Command Authority had shown its "complete confidence in the command and control system put in place", he said.

The NBC television on Friday quoted an unnamed US official as saying that the United States had held talks with Pakistan on ensuring that the country's nuclear technology and arsenal did not fall into the hands of extremists. But the military spokesman rejected the report as "totally baseless".