I refused to sell Pak N-tech: Benazir

In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper, Benazir, who served two terms from 1988-90 and 1993-1996, said she and senior military officers had agreed on a bar on the export of nuclear technology in December 1988.

This, however, did not prevent senior military officials and scientists persisting with the idea and later in her first term broaching the subject of raising money by selling nuclear know-how, she said.

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"It certainly was their belief that they could earn tons of money if they did this," she said.

"It was something that I was disabusing them of, that they could not get it. If they chose to sell it, only three countries would buy it, because it wasn't like McDonald's hamburgers that would have a big consumer market," she said.

She said the three countries she was referring to were Iran, Iraq and Libya and that she had told officials it would sell for no more than 100 million dollars (80 million euros) per country, not enough to help Pakistan's economy.

Benazir's comments came two days after she said that the architect of the country's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was "covering up" for President Pervez Musharraf by publicly confessing to transferring nuclear technology to other countries.