The dispute occurred at a time when the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been demanding that states such as Iran and North Korea allow it to inspect sensitive nuclear facilities.

Officials in Washington and the IAEA have been anxious to avoid having a friendly nation like Brazil become a bad precedent.

"There's an agreement, but it now has to go through various checks," said a diplomat close to the IAEA, speaking of the body's need to verify that enriched uranium was not being diverted from a plant in Resende in southeastern Brazil for clandestine development of nuclear weapons.

"There will be visual access to the site," said the diplomat, according to whom the proposal had come from Brazil: "The question is how much is enough," he said.

"There will be enough for the IAEA to do its verification work," he continued: "The IAEA doesn't need more than that."

IAEA inspectors visited Brazil in October to work out an agreement that activities at the uranium enrichment plant in Resende, 180 kilometersmiles) west of Rio de Janeiro, do not violate international safeguards against diverting nuclear material for weapons programs.

Brazil, with one of the world's largest uranium reserves, denied IAEA inspectors access to the facility in February and March, saying they wanted to keep advanced technology at the plant secret in order to be able to sell it abroad.

Uranium enriched by centrifuges produces fuel for civilian reactors, as well as atomic bombs.

Brazil has signed and ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and cannot operate the plant until it gets a green light from the IAEA, the UN body that monitors treaty compliance.

The US government has said it was confident Brazil was not developing nuclear weapons.

But in October visiting IAEA inspectors were not allowed to see the centrifuges which enrich uranium as they were screened by panels.

The Brazilian proposal will allow IAEA inspectors to see only parts of centrifuges.

A diplomat close to the talks told AFP the two sides "are trying to translate their understanding into writing, and then decide how to proceed."

Key nuclear technology that Brazil is trying to prevent UN inspectors seeing may have been acquired from a nuclear smuggling network that also supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea, a US non-proliferation expert said last month.

"Look at the performance (data) of these centrifuges (in Brazil). They look very similar to the P2," centrifuge sold by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's network, said Henry Sokolski, a former Pentagon official who now runs the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center think tank in Washington.

But IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said: "There is no indication so far that any other country shopped from the Khan network" beyond Iran, Libya and North Korea.

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