The UN nuclear watchdog plans to submit a draft to its board of directors in September and put the idea into practice by 2010, when the next Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference gathers, Kyodo News quoted diplomatic sources as saying.

But the IAEA's drive for the international management of sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, in particular uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technology, has drawn opposition from Japan, the United States and Iran, the report said.

These countries view the move as infringing state sovereignty on the use of nuclear energy, the sources said, adding that Russia and some other countries basically support the idea.

Enriched uranium as well as plutonium can be used to produce nuclear weapons.

IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei set out the idea of international management in late 2003 to prevent nuclear proliferation via nuclear projects in North Korea and Iran under the guise of peaceful purposes, Kyodo said.

The goal is to allow uranium enrichment and plutonium extraction from nuclear waste only at the internationally managed facilities and use them to provide nuclear fuel for countries that do not host them.

The draft calls for first imposing a five-year moratorium on building new nuclear fuel cycle facilities and establishing a system to guarantee that the international supply of fuel from the facilities is placed under international management, the report said.

It then seeks to establish the eight-10 IAEA-controlled facilities as regional centres for producing, providing and reprocessing nuclear fuel while storing and disposing of nuclear waste.

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