Khan has been under house arrest in Pakistan since his televised confession in February that he supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Nuclear experts from the United States, other countries and the U.N. watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, are denied direct access to Khan but they can send their queries to Pakistani officials who later send them the answers after interrogating Khan.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated Pakistan's position that it cannot allow international experts to meet Khan.

Our own investigation process is appropriate. Therefore, there is no question of allowing access to international experts, either directly or indirectly, said spokesman Masood Khan.

Khan, credited with making Pakistan a nuclear weapons state, is regarded as a national hero in his country and is much more popular than President Pervez Musharraf. This forced Musharraf to pardon him after the confession. Since then, Khan has been confined to his home and has no access to anyone.

Last week, anti-nuclear lobbyists urged the Bush administration to use its influence on Pakistan to arrange for direct interrogation. They told a Capitol Hill briefing the world would not know the truth about Iran's nuclear program until international experts question Khan.

It may be unachievable, but it is very important that the U.S. put pressure on Pakistan to allow this, because you cannot trust the Pakistani government in the end to represent what A.Q. Khan says, an anti-nuclear activist and former arms inspector David Albright told the briefing. And you have to worry about whether it's complete, and unfortunately, you have to worry about whether it is fully accurate, he added.

Pakistan has so far successfully resisted pressure to allow open access to Khan. They have opposed it because of Khan's high stature at home but partly because of fears that the interrogation would also expose Pakistan's own nuclear program.

Both India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices in May 1998 and have seen been developing weapon-delivery systems.

But the CIA's latest revelation, posted on its Web site Tuesday, will make it very difficult for Pakistan to continue to resist international pressure for an open interrogation of Khan.

The CIA report also indicates a major shift in U.S. policy on this issue. In the past, such allegations were usually made in leaks to the U.S. media, and were mostly attributed to unnamed American officials. But the CIA report is a rare official document to be made public on Khan's activities.

The unclassified version of the report sent to Congress says, The A.Q. Khan network provided Iran with designs for Pakistan's older centrifuges as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models and components.

The report, however, does not say explicitly whether the Khan network sold Iran complete plans for building a warhead. The CIA says that the bomb-making designs the Khan network gave to Iran in the 1990s were more significant than the U.S. government had previously disclosed.

Also on Wednesday, the New York Times published excerpts from a speech former CIA Director George J. Tenet gave to a private, closed-door gathering. In that speech, Tenet describes Khan as being at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden because of his role in providing nuclear technology to other countries.

Until now, in discussing Iran's nuclear program, American officials have referred publicly only to Khan's role in supplying designs for older Pakistani centrifuges used to enrich uranium and known as P-1 and P-2. Although American officials had suspected that Khan's network provided Iran with a warhead design as well, they never made this allegation publicly.

The CIA report is the first to assert that the designs provided to Iran also included those for weapons components.

The report to Congress is an annual update, required by law, on countries struggling to acquire illicit weapons technology. The posting of the unclassified version on the agency's Web site was two days before the IAEA is scheduled to review the status of Iran's weapons program in Vienna.

The Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions is the first to be issued by the agency since November. It focuses on the period from July to December 2003, but also discusses broader trends.

In a speech in Georgia in September, Tenet said that the CIA began probing the Khan network in 1997, but kept it secret from everyone except President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush. Describing a hidden network that stretched across three continents, Tenet said: Working with British colleagues, we pieced together his (Khan's) subsidiaries, his clients, his front companies, his finances and manufacturing plants. We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms. We were everywhere these people were.

Tenet called the agency's role one of the greatest success stories nobody ever talks about.

The unclassified version of the CIA report also expresses concerns that outside experts, including a Pakistani nuclear engineer, may have provided assistance to al-Qaida as part of its quest to acquire nuclear weapons. One of our highest concerns is al-Qaida's stated readiness to attempt unconventional attacks against us, the report says.

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