Islamabad: Pakistan is working to boost nuclear cooperation with long-time ally China to improve technology for power generation, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Monday.
Upset over a US decision to supply civilian nuclear technology to India, Pakistan has shown interest in buying nuclear reactors from China as well as Western countries to meet its growing needs.
"A significant area of cooperation between Pakistan and China has been the harnessing of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under international safeguards - for the production of electricity," Aziz was quoted by the official Associated Press of Pakistan as telling a gathering in Islamabad.
"The two countries are working towards further expanding cooperation in this area," he said without elaborating.
China helped build a 300 megawatt nuclear power plant for Pakistan in 1999 while construction work for another Chinese-supplied nuclear plant of the same capacity was launched in December.
Pakistan plans to produce 8,800 mw of electricity through nuclear energy by 2030.
The country currently produces 20,000 mw of electricity, but only 2.4 per cent comes from nuclear power. The United States' refusal to give Pakistan the same access to nuclear technology as India stems in part from the role played by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in an international nuclear black market scandal.
Pakistan built its first nuclear power station in 1972 with Canadian help, but western countries - under pressure from the United States - later halted cooperation amid suspicions that Islamabad was secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Pakistan exploded its first nuclear device in May 1998.
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