The South Asian nation said last week it wanted to join the 44-member Nuclear Suppliers Group despite international concern over a black market run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced father of Pakistan's atomic bomb.

"As far as Nuclear Suppliers Group is concerned they are visiting Pakistan," foreign ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told a regular press briefing.

"The visit will take place on 11th and 12th of April."

Pakistan first tested a nuclear warhead in 1998 and has since been under a strict embargo by the group, which includes the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia and other key atomic-armed powers.

Islamabad's bid to join will face major difficulties because Pakistan is outside the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, along with its nuclear rival India and suspected nuclear state Israel.

The group aims to prevent nuclear exports for commercial and peaceful purposes from being used to make nuclear weapons. Members voluntarily coordinate their export controls to non-nuclear-weapon states.

Jilani did not say if Pakistan would press for membership during the visit, the country's first formal interaction with the group.

"We want to have a mutually cooperative relationship with the Nuclear Suppliers Group. We feel that Pakistan's goals and the goals of Nuclear Suppliers Group, they are common," he told the briefing.

"We feel that Pakistan being a nuclear weapon state, our scientists and our engineers dealing with nuclear technology, they have achieved the excellence.... We can share our nuclear expertise to the mutual benefit."

Pakistan admitted earlier this month that Khan, its top nuclear scientist, provided Iran with centrifuges but insisted the government was not involved in the deal. Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium for warheads.

Khan confessed in February 2004 to giving nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

He is currently under virtual house arrest but was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan has refused to let the UN atomic energy agency question him.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a visit to Islamabad last week that Washington wants to crush the "tentacles" of the Khan network, but added that Pakistan was cooperating.

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