"We support this American initiative," Alexander Rumyantsev, who is head of the Russian federal nuclear agency, said in Vienna.

But he said it should be "incorporated in international agreements" since current US-Russian efforts to turn weapons-grade highly enriched uraniuminto low-enriched uranium (LEU) were governed under a bilateral, US-Russian political agreement.

The fuel bank should be overseen by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, Rumyantsev said. He was speaking to reporters at a general conference in Vienna this week of the IAEA's 139 member states.

"The IAEA is the organization that will have to develop the regulations and rules for such a mechanism," he said.

The United States is ready to convert HEU into LEU, which does not have a proliferation risk, and offer it to countries which give up the enrichment process, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Monday in a statement read out on his behalf.

A senior US diplomat said the offer was made in order to "kick-start" the creation of a multinational fuel bank so that countries could have access to nuclear fuel without having the capability to make it themselves.

The diplomat said it was not yet determined, however, who would participate, where the bank would be, who would run it or how it would be run.

Besides the United States, the other countries which produce enriched uranium for commercial use are France, Russia, Japan, Brazil, China and the Netherlands, Germany and Britain in the Urenco consortium.

There was however agreement that the so-called "break-out" capability, when nations are capable of enriching uranium, is a proliferation risk since HEU can be either fuel for reactors or bomb material. LEU, which is also reactor fuel, is not a direct bomb risk.

Both US President George W. Bush and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei have made proposals to create an international fuel service but details have not been made clear.

ElBaradei said Monday in opening the IAEA conference that he was "convinced that a key to strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime lies in arresting the dissemination of sensitive fuel cycle activities and the development of a framework for multilateral management of such activities."

But the ability to control supply is limited since there is currently an abundant amount of enriched uranium on the world market.

The senior US diplomat said Bodman was trying to deliver the message "that the United States strongly supports the peaceful use of nuclear energy."

The diplomat said the exact amount of HEU the United States is ready to "blend down" is 17.4 metric tons, which is enough for hundreds of atom bombs and would make enough low enriched uranium to power 10 nuclear reactors.

The HEU is an amount "currently in the US inventory but declared in excess of national security needs."

The blended-down LEU will be "available about 2009."

IAEA officials said they had been alerted to the US offer but had not yet studied it.

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