Prevez Musharraf (top) and Abdul Qadeer Khan

Washington, March 31 (Reuters): Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was aware of Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear black market activities for at least a few years, but political pressures kept him from moving aggressively against Khan until recently, US undersecretary of state John Bolton said today.

But Bolton reaffirmed Washington’s view that Musharraf and other top Pakistani officials were not “complicit in or approved of (Khan’s) proliferation activities” and therefore are not subject to US sanctions.

Bolton, testifying before a congressional committee, came under fire from Opposition Democrats. They accused the Bush administration of failing to hold Pakistan’s leaders accountable for Khan’s blackmarket activities and for not using economic muscle to keep countries and companies from doing business with Iran and North Korea.

With Iran and North Korea’s nuclear activities a growing concern for Washington, nonproliferation issues could loom large in the 2004 election.

Since Khan, the father of the Islamic bomb, confessed in February to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, US officials have insisted only Khan was responsible, not Musharraf and his government.

Bolton reiterated that position, saying US officials investigated Khan’s activities and “we have no evidence that President Musharraf and top officials of the government of Pakistan are complicit.”

But under questioning by the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Bolton said Musharraf was aware of Khan’s activities when he fired him as head of Khan Research Laboratory in the year 2001.

“I think it was a very difficult question for President Musharraf in the face of the internal political dynamic in Pakistan, which has resulted in the past two months ... in two assassination attempts against him,” Bolton said.

“In fact, it was the exposure of the Iranian nuclear weapons programme... and (Libyan leader Muammar) Gaddafi’s decision to forswear all of his WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programmes that brought us to the point that it was possible for Musharraf to take the actions that he did,” Bolton said.

Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, had to balance US demands for action on Khan against a risk of angering the army, his base of support, experts say. Representative Gary Ackerman said Bush’s most recent decision making Pakistan a non-Nato ally goes too far, adding: “This double standard with regard to Pakistan makes a mockery of our nonproliferation efforts around the world.”