Roh said South Korea was operating six nuclear power plants and could draw on its skills to help Indonesia develop an atomic energy programme.

"(South) Korea has accumulated the necessary expertise and skills," he told a lunch hosted by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Roh said the two countries had signed an agreement on cooperation for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and that development of the sector had "vast potentials for cooperation" between them.

"I hope we can use this opportunity to give action to our cooperation in the field of nuclear energy," Roh said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia had not yet decided whether to go ahead with its own nuclear power programme but would still forge cooperation in developing atomic energy for peaceful purposes.

"In the energy field, we explained that besides developing our fossil energy, that is gas and oil, we are also developing biofuel renewable energy. And we also have to think of long-term interests and cooperation in the field of the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Yudhoyono told journalists after meeting Roh at the presidential palace earlier Monday.

"Whether at one time there will be an urgent need and it is deemed to be an appropriate policy for Indonesia to develop nuclear energy, that would be a problem we would have to decide together later," Yudhoyono said.

He said that by cooperating with other countries to develop a nuclear energy system, "if at one time Indonesia has to choose, we would already really know the pluses and minuses of the technology."

Indonesia has previously said that it plans to build its first nuclear power plant, with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts, on densely-populated Java island by 2015. The government however has yet to secure investors.

Indonesia's nuclear power plans were shelved in 1997 in the face of mounting public opposition and the discovery and exploitation of the large Natuna gas field. But the plans were floated again last year amid growing power shortages.

The province of Gorontalo, on Sulawesi island, is considering developing a floating nuclear power plant using Russian expertise.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia's only member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but its oil output has fallen in recent years to about one million barrels per day amid flagging investment.

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