Pakistan is the 'most dangerous' country in the world right now the New Yorker magazine, quoting an American non-proliferation expert, said.

It said if the United States is 'incinerated' any time it will be because of the highly enriched uranium that was given to Al-Qaeda by Islamabad.

The article by noted investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the latest issue of the magazine said there is an "awful lot of Al-Qaeda sympathy within Pakistan's nuclear programme".

The article titled "What the Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear programme" quoted a top secret Central Intelligence Agency document to say that since 1997 Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead design information and weapon-testing data with the Pyongyang regime.

"Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration's important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb," it said.

The document known as the National Intelligence Estimate was classified as top secret SCI [sensitive compartmental information] and meant for distribution within the government. Its most politically sensitive information was about Pakistan.

Hersh, quoting a former Pakistani official, said the Pakistan government's contacts with North Korea increased dramatically in 1997 when Pakistan's economy had floundered and there was 'no more money' to pay for North Korean missile support.

Pakistan therefore started 'paying' for missiles by providing 'some of the know-how and the specifics' in nuclear bomb technology, according to the official.

Pakistan sent prototypes of high-speed centrifuge machines to North Korea and, sometime in 2001, Korean scientists began to enrich uranium in significant quantities.

Pakistan also helped North Korea conduct a series of 'cold tests' [simulated nuclear explosions] using natural uranium, which are necessary to determine whether a nuclear device will detonate properly.

Pakistan also advised North Korean intelligence service 'how to fly under the radar' or how to hide nuclear research from American satellites and US and South Korean intelligence agents, the former official said.