"We are not providing any centrifuges," Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told AFP. "These are entirely baseless reports."

Diplomats in Vienna Sunday told AFP Pakistan was sending used centrifuge parts to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency to help it figure out the origin of highly enriched uranium contamination found in Iran.

"We have not been asked to hand over any centrifuges to the IAEA," Jilani said later.

"We are cooperating with the IAEA and as is the norm and international practice, our cooperation with the IAEA is of confidential nature," he told a weekly press briefing.

Pakistan, while dealing with the UN agency, would be "strictly guided by our national interest and also by the imperatives of protecting our strategic assets," Jilani said.

An IAEA spokeswoman said Monday that the agency had no comment on the matter.

Pakistan last week admitted that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced scientist who fathered the country's nuclear weapons program, had sold Iran centrifuges used to enrich uranium into what can be either fuel for nuclear power plants or the explosive core of atom bombs.

Jilani said Pakistani investigations found some "clandestine transfers" took place at some stage.

"Those transfers were investigated by us and we shared the results with the international agency. Our efforts have been greatly appreciated by the IAEA," he said.

"The centrifuge parts will be sent to the IAEA in Seibersdorf" near Vienna, which will analyze and compare them with centrifuge components Khan sold to Iran, a Western diplomat close to the IAEA told AFP.

The IAEA is investigating contamination by microscopic particles of highly enriched uranium (HEU) found in Iran at a workshop in Tehran, at a pilot enrichment plant at Natanz and at other sites where there were centrifuges.

Iran, which says its nuclear program is for the peaceful purpose of making electricity, claims the HEU-contaminated equipment came from imported machinery and not from enrichment activities in Iran.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.