The father of the Pakistani bomb says that helping the CIA fight the Russians in Afghanistan gave his country "the space" it needed to develop nuclear weapons.

"We were allying with the United States in the Afghan war. The aid was coming," nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan said in an Aug. 31 Pakistan television interview, an English translation of which surfaced Tuesday.

"I maintain that the war had provided us with space to enhance our nuclear capability," Khan  added.

"The credit goes to me and my team, because it was a very difficult task, which was next to impossible. But given the US and European pressure on our program, it is true that had the Afghan war not taken place at that time, we would not have been able to make the bomb as early as we did," Khan said.

Pakistan denied Wednesday that any of its nuclear facilities had been attacked, while the author of the original allegation said his words were being ripped out of context.

Shaun Gregory, a U.K.-based expert on Pakistan, reported in a prestigious West Point, N.Y. counterterrorism journal that extremist militants had attacked nuclear arms facilities three times over the past two years.

Recent jihadist attacks on Pakistan's nuclear facilities did not threaten the security of the weapons inside, an American intelligence official says.

Amid the weekend's scare stories about the nuclear Hermit Kingdom's missile test, few seemed to notice that it fizzled out.

And the sight of the rocket's third stage plopping into the North Pacific could present the missile bureaucrats who toil under North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il with an "uncomfortable" review, notes Joseph Bermudez, Jane Defense Weekly's expert on the secretive communist country.