"I never said we will send troops, but I also don't say that we will never send them," he told the Dawn newspaper.

However the level of domestic opposition to a troop deployment to Iraq made it impossible to send them right now, he noted.

"There is a domestic environment which is against it. So we cannot send troops in this environment," Musharraf was quoted as saying.

The general was also inflexible on certain conditions for deploying Pakistani troops to the strife-torn country.

The request must come from the Iraqi people and other Muslim countries send troops, he said.

The foreign ministry on Monday ruled out sending troops in "present volatile and unstable" circumstances.

"There is no commitment whatsoever on troops deployment. The situation there is volatile and unstable...it does not make any sense," spokesman Masood Khan told a weekly press briefing.

Pakistan, which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq without United Nations approval, turned down a US request last year to send peacekeepers to Iraq.

It has again been asked this year to send troops, but for the purpose of guarding future United Nations offices in Baghdad.

Two Pakistani hostages were executed by militant abductors in Iraq last week, prompting criticism of the government for not categorically ruling out sending troops there.

The victims' captors had issued messages citing earlier comments by Musharraf on the possibility of sending troops to Iraq, as one of their reasons for holding the Pakistanis.

Pakistanis should expect more terror attacks as the government cracks down on Islamic militants, President Pervez Musharraf said in the interview after a series of high-profile al-Qaeda captures.

"Now we are acting against them, very actively. Previously nobody had the courage to do that. Nobody was touching religious organisations, now we are touching them," General Musharraf, who has narrowly escaped two assassination attempts blamed on al-Qaeda, told the Dawn newspaper.

"Therefore they will set off bomb blasts, they will create problems for you. Becau{e we are arresting them and... we are eliminating masterminds."

"The nation should understand that they will keep on confronting us and this problem will be with us... (because) we take up issues and not put them under the carpet."