"We are denying it. This is baseless. He said nothing of this kind," military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.

Just one month after Pakistan shocked the world with a public confession by its top nuclear scientist to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, Nigeria has accused the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff General Muhammad Aziz Khan of offering it nuclear assistance.

Nigeria's defence ministry said Khan made the offer during talks Wednesday with Defence Minister Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso in Abuja.

A statement issued in Lagos said General Khan told Kwankwoso that "his country is working out the dynamics of how it can assist Nigeria's armed forces to strengthen its military capability and to acquire nuclear power.

Pakistan's Information Minister Sheikh Rashid accused Lagos of mounting a smear campaign.

"This is sheer nonsense. It seems to be part of a campaign to smear Pakistan," he told AFP.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, the metallurgist hailed as the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, confessed on television last month to proliferating nuclear secrets after a two-month probe prompted by information from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has denied allegations that former army chiefs and governments authorised the nuclear sales, insisted that no proliferation has taken place since he seized power in a 1999 coup, and vowed that it would never happen again.

But he has refused to allow an inquiry by international investigators, who want to probe further to determine whether the nuclear know-how was sold to other countries.

Musharraf pardoned A.Q. Khan after he made the televised confession and exonerated the military of any role.

However in a written confession submitted five days before his televised admission, A.Q. Khan had accused two former army chiefs of "indirectly pressuring" him to proliferate, a military official told AFP in February.

WAR.WIRE