Islamabad: After granting pardon to the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, A Q Khan, for leaking nuclear secrets to other countries, President Pervez Musharraf turned the heat on former Army chiefs and local media saying their speeches and write ups harmed the country and asked them to refrain from doing so in national interest.

"These people want to come in limelight so that people realise their importance. But they say baseless things," a stern looking Musharraf told a briefing of editors in Islamabad.

Reading out the headlines in local newspapers, he said, persistent write-ups accusing Army of involvement in proliferation did a dis-service to Pakistan and wanted the media not to write about it in the national interest even if such allegations were true. "Stop writing this. You do not know what would be result of this reckless implication of every institution in the proliferation issue."

"The UN Security Council will immediately impose sanctions against us, next we will be asked to sign the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) and roll back, then we will be declared a rogue state and finally our vital interests would come under imminent physical danger," he warned last night (Feb 5, 2004).

He directly referred to former Army Chief Aslam Beg as "pseudo intellectual" for his admission in recent press interviews that uranium enrichment was scaled down drastically in 1989 after a decision by the National Command Authority (NCA) at that time in order to escape the allegations of proliferation.