Asked whether Islamabad's Inter-Services Intelligence has been helping the ousted Taliban, Musharraf, speaking on NBC television's "Meet the Press" programme, answered with an emphatic "no."

"Nobody in the ISI has," he said.

However he added, "I have some reports that some dissidents, some people, retired people who were in the forefront in ISI during the period of '79 to '89, may be assisting with their links somewhere here and there," he said.

"We are keeping a very tight watch, and we'll get a hold of them if at all that happens."

The ISI and US Central Intelligence Agency supported anti-communist Mujahideen factions, including some radical Islamist groups, during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The Islamist Taliban eventually seized power in the early 1990s after the overthrow of the pro-Moscow regime in Kabul.

Musharraf expressed concern that current support for the Taliban may be more widespread than many observers are aware.

"They don't know the realities on (the) ground. They're not conscious of the reality I'm seeing -- the extreme danger of this becoming a people's movement," he said.

Pakistan's foreign ministry yesterday pledged to take action if rival India produced any evidence to show that Pakistan's spy agency was involved in the Mumbai train bombings in July.

But Pakistan again denied claims by Mumbai police that the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and the Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic militant group helped launch the attacks that killed 186 people.

"If India feels that it has some information that suggests links with some people here or some kind of connection, then yes we will take action and will help India in its investigations," foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a weekly briefing.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said on Sunday that New Delhi would hand over evidence of the alleged links, but Aslam said Pakistan had not received anything from India so far.

"What we expect from India is to share the claimed evidence and information with us so that we can cooperate with them," she said.

The Indian allegations, first made on Saturday, were an attempt to "divert attention from indigenous elements" engaged in terrorism in India, the spokeswoman said, adding that Mumbai police were "propagandists".

"This is all internal and this is yet another effort to externalise internal malaise," she said.

Pakistan at the weekend strongly rejected the claims, which come at a time when the ISI is also under scrutiny from Islamabad's increasingly disaffected allies in the "war on terror".

The Taliban are waging a virulent insurgency in Afghanistan. The rebels, who are allied with al-Qaeda, have attacked troops in large numbers and intensified a campaign of suicide and roadside bombings.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in insurgency-related unrest this year, most of them Taliban rebels.

US-led forces launched the war against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies shortly after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.