Iran denied yesterday that nuclear scientists from Pakistan, North Korea and other countries had helped its atomic program and reiterated that its nuclear aims were confined to civilian purposes.

The LA Times newspaper reported earlier this week that Iran was on the verge of being able to produce atomic weapons thanks largely to clandestine assistance from Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea.

"This paper's claim about Iran's cooperation with other countries for obtaining nuclear technology is a sheer lie," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.

"This report is irresponsible and is an obvious misuse of professional journalism," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry on

Tuesday flatly denied that Pakistan had provided any help to Iran's nuclear program. Iran is known to have imported some uranium from China in the early 1990s and Russia is helping Iran complete its first nuclear energy reactor in the southern port of Bushehr.

Iran insists that it has no intention of building nuclear weapons and says it merely wants to use nuclear technology to generate electricity.

"Iran's nuclear technology has been developed based on Iranian scientists' efforts and it is purely for civilian and peaceful purposes," Asefi said.

"Iran has openly announced that nuclear weapons have no place in its military and security doctrine and we basically believe that obtaining weapons of mass destruction is immoral, inhuman and against religious beliefs," he added.