Pakistan scientist Khan says nuclear confession was forced

Islamabad: Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said his confession four years ago to selling nuclear secrets was forced on him, a British newspaper reported on Friday.

"It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand," Khan told the Guardian newspaper from Islamabad, where he has been held under house arrest since 2004.

Khan refused to say whether he was a scapegoat for Pakistani generals involved in the nuclear trade, as some Western diplomats alleged.

"I don't want to talk about it. Those things are to forget about," Khan said, adding that he would not cooperate with investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Khan told the Guardian that the nuclear technology being traded to Iran or North Korea was freely available in the West.

"They were supplying to us, they were supplying to them ... anyone who could pay," he was quoted as saying.

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