KARACHI, 16 April 2004 — Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has admitted she sanctioned the purchase of ballistic missile technology from North Korea in 1994.

But she declined to approve the development of long-range missiles during her second stint in power, between 1994 and 1996, she said in a letter to United Press International. She said her government believed in the policy of “keeping parity with India” and did not want to “develop missiles of longer range than India had.”

Benazir said that Pakistan came under great financial pressure after it detonated nuclear devices in May 1998. She also dismissed as speculative media reports that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had visited the nuclear reactor in Karachi, a project that started in the 1960s. She was responding to a report that Mohammed Beg, who claimed to be a senior official in her father’s government, had revealed that Qaddafi “ordered transfers of money to Pakistan.”

“I don’t remember anyone named Mohammed Beg as being close to my father”, said Benazir. “My father was not the type of man who would share secrets with others.” She rejected a suggestion that Z.A. Bhutto named the Lahore stadium after Qaddafi because the Libyan leader financed Pakistan’s nuclear program.