For four years, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, has lived in the shadows, confined to his Islamabad home since a tearful televised confession in which he admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. On Thursday, the 76-year-old scientist returned to the spotlight with a bold new twist: that he had not meant a word of his earlier admission. In his first western media interview since 2004, Mr. Khan said the confession had been forced upon him by President Pervez Musharraf. "It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand,' he said. More worryingly, he swore never to cooperate with investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite persistent fears that nuclear technology traded by his accomplices could fall into terrorist hands. "Why should I talk to them?' he said. "I am under no obligation. We are not a signatory to the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty]. I have not violated international laws.' He said details of his clandestine nuclear supply network were "my internal affair and my country's affair.' Despite numerous requests from the U.S. government and IAEA, Pakistan has refused access to Mr. Khan, who is still considered a national hero. An IAEA spokesman in Vienna declined to respond to his comments. Until this week, Mr. Khan had been unseen and largely unheard since his February 2004 appearance, in which he said he had hawked the country's nuclear know-how abroad. He offered his "deepest regrets and unqualified apologies.' Since then Mr. Khan has been confined to his villa below the Margalla Hills in Islamabad, where he lives with his Dutch wife, Henny. He was initially subjected to tight restrictions. Telephone calls were monitored, internet access was forbidden and visitors were turned away by soldiers camped at his gate. He was allowed to leave the house in August 2006 only for a cancer operation in Karachi. But as the retired General Musharraf's powers have ebbed over the past year, so have the ties on Mr. Khan been loosened. First he was allowed to meet close friends, then last month he gave his first interview from his house arrest to a Urdu newspaper. Now, he hopes that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani would set him free. "As long as you are living there is always hope,' he said, adding that he would wait for pressing economic and political crises to pass. In reality, he may be waiting for General Musharraf to be forced out. On Thursday, the military dismissed speculation, prompted by changes in the Army command, that General Musharraf was about to quit as President. "A section of press is trying to sensationalise routine functional matters,' said a spokesman. Mr. Khan has emerged as Pakistan celebrates the 10th anniversary of the 1998 test that catapulted the volatile nation into the nuclear club. Speaking by telephone, he displayed the mix of defiant nationalism and religious ardour that has endeared him to many Pakistanis. Reports that nuclear technology was smuggled abroad were "western rubbish.'