Pakistan Denies of geting nuclear aid from china

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan on Friday dismissed a media report about Beijing providing it with weapons-grade uranium and a blueprint for an atomic bomb and described it as an effort to divert attention from support being extended by "some states" to India's nuclear programme.

Foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit described the allegations made in an article in the Washington Post newspaper as "baseless".

"Pakistan strongly rejects the assertions in the article that is evidently timed to malign Pakistan and China," he said.

"This is yet another attempt to divert attention from the overt and covert support being extended by some states to the Indian nuclear programme since its inception and intensified more recently in stark contradiction to their self-avowed commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," he said.

Pakistan and China have "comprehensive and all-dimensional cooperation", which includes civilian nuclear cooperation for peaceful purposes, Basit said.

"This has always been above board. Pakistan and China have always respected their respective international obligations and non-proliferation norms," he said.

Citing an account provided by disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan, the Washington Post reported on Friday that China provided Pakistan enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs and the blueprint for a simple nuclear weapon in 1982.

Iran Should cooperate on nuke issue says IAEA chief

UNITED NATIONS: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei has asked Iran to respond swiftly to the offer made by the US,
France and Russia to process it's enriched uranium to fuel abroad.

"This is a unique and fleeting opportunity to reverse course from confrontation to cooperation and should, therefore, not be missed," he said yesterday at the UN General Assembly.

In his last address before stepping down as the chief of the IAEA, ElBaradei asked the international community to stick to the path of multilateral dialogue and not to follow the road of unilateral action, which had led to a "senseless tragedy" in Iraq.

"We must engage those with whom we have differences in dialogue rather than seeking to isolate them," he said. "We must act within the framework of international institutions - in this case, the IAEA and the Security Council - and empower them, rather than bypass them through unilateral action."

ElBaradei regretted that the Iraq war happened on his watch, which was done on "false pretext".

"I will always lament the fact that the tragic war was launched in Iraq that has cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians," he said, highlighting that the agency had found no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons programme or any other weapons of mass destruction.