"We will continue to cooperate with the IAEA as we have been cooperating in the past," foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said at his weekly news briefing.

He said the government was in contact with the IAEA and "we shall continue to remain in touch with them."

IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei Sunday acknowledged that Pakistan had been cooperating, but added "more cooperation" was still needed to compare uranium centrifuge components with a type sold through an international black market to Iran.

Pakistan conducted a probe based on a report from the IAEA last year that Iran received nuclear secrets from Pakistani scientists.

The IAEA alerted Pakistan last year that Iran had blueprints for centrifuges that were similar to ones Pakistan had used in building the bomb.

The father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had acquired those blueprints when he worked in the Netherlands in the 1970s, last month publicly confessed that he had shared nuclear secrets with Iran, Libya and North Korea.

President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan, who is revered as a "national hero" for bringing nuclear technology to Pakistan.

Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in May 1998 after similar tests by rival neighbour India. It is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which empowers the agency to monitor worldwide compliance with nuclear safeguards.

WAR.WIRE