Yonhap news agency said late Thursday that the 52 accounts containing a total of 25 million dollars at Banco Delta Asia (BDA) have been combined into one to ease the transfer.

O Kwang-Chol, president of the North's Foreign Trade Bank, gave orders via email to BDA to wire the money, and Macau's financial authorities said the bank will comply with the request, Yonhap quoted sources as saying in a report datelined from the Chinese territory.

It said O is now formally the owner of the bank account.

The agency said the transfer is expected to be made to a third country by this weekend, probably via Singapore and Italy.

"We hope the issue will be solved in the near future. As yet we have no official information on when the funds will be released," a South Korean foreign ministry spokesman told AFP.

A six-nation deal reached on February 13 offered North Korea one million tons of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus diplomatic benefits, for declaring all nuclear programmes and disabling all nuclear facilities.

Under the first phase the communist state, which tested a nuclear bomb last October, was to shut down its Yongbyon reactor in the presence of UN atomic inspectors in return for an initial 50,000 tons of oil.

The North insisted the funds row be solved before it takes action and it missed the April 14 deadline for the reactor shutdown. The accounts had been frozen since 2005 after the United States alleged they were the proceeds of counterfeiting and money-laundering.

The US and Macau authorities said in March the funds have been unfrozen and are available for collection. But there were apparent problems in persuading a foreign bank to handle money seen as tainted.

Analysts said the North wants to arrange a transfer through an overseas bank to test whether its access to the international financial system has been restored.

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