Benazir Bhutto had imposed a strict embargo on nuclear-related exports to avoid undermining global stability, sources close to the former Pakistani prime minister have claimed.

The embargo was imposed under the guidelines of the Benazir Nuclear Doctrine of 1989 that evolved with US support, a decade before Pakistan carried out its nuclear tests.

"Under this doctrine, Islamabad undertook not to put together the components of a nuclear device unless its security was threatened and also not to export nuclear technology to any third country," the sources added.

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Pakistan is in the eye of a storm after it emerged that it may have been the source of nuclear technology in the possession of Libya and Iran.

The Musharraf regime has admitted that rogue scientists might have peddled nuclear technology for personal gains.

A report in London's Sunday Times quoted Western officials as saying that Pakistani scientists may have received payments from Libya – possibly up to $100m - over several years, starting in the late 1990s. The time period is significant because Bhutto had been overthrown by that time and Nawaz Sharief was the prime minister until October 1999, when General Pervez Musharraf seized power.

The scientist who masterminded the clandestine and illegal transfer of centrifuge technology from Holland to Pakistan was Bhopal-born metallurgist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is today revered as the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb.

At present, he and some other scientists are being interrogated by Pakistani security officials about his subsequent role in exporting nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Others include Yasin Chohan, Mohammed Farooq and Sayed Ahmed.

Khan is understood to have named former chief of army staff general Aslam Beg as a key figure in pushing for the sale of nuclear components and blueprints to any country that was prepared to pay for them.