The recommendation was made in a 24-page report released by the Task Force on Korean Policy, a group of top former US military officials, diplomats and academics with decades of expertise on Korean issues.

"Greater recognition should be given to the urgency of the threat posed by North Korea's possession of significant quantities of weapons-usable plutonium that could be transferred to third parties," said the report, seen by AFP.

"The group urges the adoption of a more ambitious, sharply-focused strategy designed to achieve the complete removal of all of this plutonium from North Korea in the first phase of denuclearization."

The Bush administration must move away from its insistence that Pyongyang first admit having a covert uranium enrichment program before negotiations can continue on exchanging denuclearization for political and economic concessions, it said.

US insistence on a covert North Korean uranium program has been seen as the major obstacle in six-party talks that include the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.

So far three rounds of talks have failed to produce any tangible results.

The crisis started in late 2002 when the Bush administration, citing the alleged uranium program, pulled out of a 1994 agreement known as the Agreed Framework.

That deal had frozen Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and energy programs in exchange for energy aid and two light water nuclear reactors which are less vulnerable to proliferation.

In retaliation for the US withdrawal, Pyongyang kicked out international nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and resumed plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon nuclear facility.

Pyongyang is believed to have some 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of plutonium, enough for four to six nuclear bombs, said the Task Force, whose members include the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Reagan government William J. Crowe, and former US ambassadors to South Korea.

The report proposed a four-step resolution of the issue based on a South Korean proposal tabled at the last six-party meeting in Beijing in June.

Following a declaration of denuclearization by Pyongyang, Washington would guarantee North Korea's security and declare the goal of eventual normalization of relations following a tripartite peace treaty that would formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.

The process would begin with the negotiation of North Korea's plutonium inventory post-1994 in the first phase, followed by removal of pre-1994 plutonium and then the dismantling of North Korea's plutonium infrastructure.

During the first three phases, the five other parties would also simultaneously negotiate North Korean energy and other needs, including food needs, and re-implement the 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually supplied to North Korea under the Agreed Framework.

The Task Force recommended the continuing suspension of the supply of the two light water nuclear reactors outlined in the Agreed Framework, but warned against discontinuing their eventual construction.

Only in the fourth phase of the proposal would North Korea's suspected uranium program be addressed and dismantled, it recommended.

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