ISLAMABAD, April 2, 2008 (AFP) - Disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said he hoped to be freed by the new government and blasted his 'illogical' detention, according to a newspaper interview published Wednesday.

Khan publicly confessed in February 2004 to passing atomic secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He was pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf but has been kept under house arrest ever since.

Hailed as a hero by many Pakistanis for transforming the country into the Islamic world's first nuclear power, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 and was hospitalised last month with complications.

'The real hooliganism is that I have been confined, and it is the cause of all my ills,' Khan was quoted as saying by the Urdu-language Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper in his first face-to-face interview in four years.

The newspaper said Khan had complained of being the victim of illegal restrictions and expressed the hope that the new elected government would end the 'unlawful' restrictions on him soon.

Musharraf's political allies were routed in February elections and a new government formed by slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's party and the grouping of former premier Nawaz Sharif has taken power.

Khan dismissed the previous government's explanation that he was being kept at his Islamabad villa for his own safety.

'It is illogical reasoning,' Khan told the newspaper.

'In 1979 a baseless case was registered against me in Holland (where he was charged with stealing nuclear secrets), I was travelling the whole world and there was no threat to my safety,' Khan said.

Khan also rejected official accounts that he was in good health, saying that 'government-sponsored news in the newspapers about my treatment are lies.'

'I don't feel life in my legs. My body is tired, my blood pressure goes up and down, although thank God I feel comfortable after my prostate operation,' he said.

Members of the new government have indicated that they may consider freeing Khan as they review Musharraf's policies over the last nine years and seek to roll back his powers.

Sharif said last week that the 'excesses being meted out to Dr Qadeer Khan will be duly redressed.'

Musharraf has refused to allow international investigators to question Khan on the extent of his proliferation activities, saying Pakistani authorities were capable of the task.