But military ruler Musharraf, who made the statement to Japan's Kyodo news agency, insisted that the equipment handed over by Khan did not in itself give the Stalinist state a nuclear weapons capability.

"Yes, he passed centrifuges -- parts and complete. I do not exactly remember the number," Musharraf said when asked about reports that Islamabad had told Tokyo that Khan provided North Korea with about 20 centrifuges.

Musharraf's chief spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, confirmed the president had made the comments.

In February 2004 Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, admitted selling atomic secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran. He said he acted without government or military support.

Khan is already known to have supplied Tehran and Tripoli with centrifuge parts. Centrifuges are used for producing enriched uranium, which can be fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors or the raw material for nuclear bombs.

North Korea is locked in a stand-off with the international community over its atomic programme and it declared in June that it has a stockpile of nuclear weapons and is producing more.

Musharraf said Khan's help would not have been decisive for North Korea's efforts to become a nuclear power, because he was not involved in other crucial areas of technology.

"So if North Korea has made a bomb... Dr. A.Q. Khan's part is only enriching the uranium to weapons grade," Musharraf told Kyodo. "He does not know about making the bomb, he does not know about the trigger mechanism, he does not know about the delivery system."

To obtain those things, the North Koreans "must have got it themselves or somewhere else -- not from Pakistan," he added.

Pakistan has consistently refused to let international investigators question Khan. The scientist has been officially pardoned by Musharraf but he has remained under virtual house arrest since late 2003.

However Musharraf's spokesman said Pakistan had already informed the UN nuclear agency and other "affected" countries about the centrifuges, and he too played down the importance of the equipment.

"Saying that someone made a bomb because Khan passed on a couple of centrifuges to them, maybe a dozen of them, this does not mean they can make a bomb," he told AFP.

"There are so many other things involved in making a bomb. Whether they have got a bomb yet we don't know."

Six-party nuclear talks on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, also involving the United States, South Korea, Russia, China and Japan, are due to resume in the week of August 29.

On Monday the International Atomic Energy Agency said that enriched uranium particles found in Iran were from smuggled Pakistani centrifuges, backing Iran's claims that it is not involved in enrichment work.

The United States says such activity would show that Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Musharraf says on his personal website (www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk) that the discovery of Khan's nuclear black market was the most embarrassing point of his career.

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