RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AFP) - A suicide bomber killed seven people near Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf's army office in Rawalpindi as the president held crucial security talks inside, officials said.

The man blew himself up at a police checkpost less than a kilometre (half a mile) from where Musharraf was meeting top government officials to discuss a recent spate of attacks, including a bid to kill former premier Benazir Bhutto.

General Musharraf, a key US ally in the "war on terror", was safe inside his army headquarters at Camp Office in the garrison city at the time of the bombing, his spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.

"It was a suicide attack. The area is sensitive -- we don't know what the exact target was," Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid, a close aide to Musharraf, told AFP.

Musharraf had been meeting provincial governors and chief ministers at Camp Office to discuss the deteriorating security situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan ahead of elections due in January, security officials said.

Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz said the bomber approached the checkpoint near Musharraf's office on foot and then detonated explosives strapped to his body. He said three policemen were among the dead.

"He wanted to get past our security cordon but we were successful in stopping him. We were alert and we will remain alert," Aziz told reporters at the scene of the attack.

Interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told reporters that seven people were killed and 14 others wounded in the attack. Remains of the bomber's head were found at the scene and he was believed to be aged 19 to 23, he added.

The site of the blast is also directly outside the office of the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, but Cheema denied the bomber meant to target the army.

"It appears to be an attack targeting police," he said.

Bomb disposal squads scooped up fragments of the bomber's head and face on a white sheet, and sifted through the debris to identify the type of explosives used in the blast, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

Several civilians were wounded when the blast hit a minibus, causing it to crash, while a mangled, blood-spattered bicycle was left lying in the road. Paramedics were seen removing several bodies.

The attack compounds the general turmoil facing Musharraf, who has himself escaped at least three major assassination attempts blamed on Islamic militants, all of them in Rawalpindi.

Two suicide bombers also blew themselves up in the city, the heart of Pakistan's military establishment, on September 4 this year, killing 25 people. Most of the dead were in a bus taking intelligence officials to work.

The latest incident came less than two weeks after twin suicide attacks in the southern city of Karachi killed 139 people during a procession to welcome Bhutto home from eight years in exile.

The two-time premier said Tuesday that she would defy security concerns and address a public meeting in Rawalpindi on November 9 "despite the bomb blast that occurred there today," but called on the government to improve security.

Pakistani officials have implicated Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network in the Karachi blasts, but Bhutto says she believes rogue security and government agents may also have been involved.

Pakistan has suffered a string of attacks since security forces raided the pro-Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad in July, piling pressure on Musharraf as he struggles with an ongoing political crisis.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on the legality of Musharraf's win in an October 6 presidential vote, a result that will determine whether Musharraf honours his vow to quit as army chief by November 15.

Government forces are meanwhile maintaining a tense ceasefire with a Taliban-style cleric in the northwestern Swat Valley, once a thriving tourist area, after clashes at the weekend that left around 60 militants dead.