PAKISTAN - The Nuclear Issue.

Gen. Musharraf is also counting on his alliance with the Bush administration to counter recurring Western pressures related to Pakistan's past nuclear co-operation with Iran.

A new assessment of Iran's nuclear programme by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that as early as 1995 Pakistan was providing Tehran with the designs for sophisticated centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade nuclear fuel. It also finds evidence that, as of the middle of last month, Iran had assembled and tested the key components for 70 of the machines, which it showed to inspectors from the IAEA.

The report, issued as a confidential document on Sept. 1 to member countries of the IAEA, says Iran received the design for an advanced centrifuge called a P-2, designed in Pakistan in 1995. But Iran, which had invested in an earlier model of the centrifuges, has told inspectors that it did not begin producing the newer, far more sophisticated machinery until 1992. The IAEA is investigating that claim.

Though the report does not cite the source of the purchase, it is now known to have been from the laboratories of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb. The origin of the equipment is important because Iran is trying to explain why some samples of uranium taken by the UN agency show that it has been enriched far beyond the levels needed to produce nuclear power.

The IAEA says its studies indicate that it is "plausible" that some of the samples it took in Iran had been contaminated by equipment that was previously used elsewhere, presumably in Pakistan. If that turns out to be true, it would help lift a cloud of suspicion that Iran was already producing uranium suitable for weapons. But agency officials are suspicious that some of the uranium could have been produced elsewhere in Iran, at facilities they have yet to discover.

Yet the report provided no new evidence of the kind of covert programmes that the IAEA has found over the past year. It suggested that Tehran was slowly becoming more helpful to inspectors. That assessment, US officials said, was likely to discourage moves by the Bush administration to take Iran to the UN Security Council for sanctions unless it dismantles its programme.