The "confidential minute" will cover Pyongyang's alleged uranium enrichment programme and nuclear cooperation with Syria, two issues which have blocked progress at the talks, South Korea's Hankyoreh daily said.

US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said in Jakarta that he may meet his North Korean counterpart soon, fuelling speculation that an agreement is close.

Hankyoreh, quoting diplomatic sources, said a separate official declaration would only deal with the North's plutonium-based nuclear activities and its commitment to dismantling all nuclear facilities.

The daily said the United States proposed the confidential document as a face-saving measure for the communist state, which denies both the existence of a secret uranium enrichment project and any nuclear cooperation with Syria.

It will also meet a US demand that Pyongyang come clean on the two key questions before the six-party talks move forward, the daily said.

The United States has vowed not to make public the confidential minute and not to exploit it for political purposes, the paper said.

Hill said in South Korea Wednesday that he is awaiting a move in the next few days. He said differences over the North's promised nuclear declaration have narrowed but that time is pressing.

South Korea is cautiously optimistic that a breakthrough can be worked out within days, Yonhap news agency Friday quoted an unidentified senior foreign ministry official as saying.

Sources in Washington told the agency that Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan will likely meet in a Southeast Asian city early next week to resolve the dispute.

Hill is currently in Indonesia attending an international conference. Yonhap cited Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore as possible venues for a meeting.

"If there is a meeting with them (the North Koreans) it will not be before I go to East Timor (on Sunday)... maybe after that visit we'll see what the schedule is," the US negotiator said.

A 2007 denuclearisation deal, involving the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia, offers the North energy aid and major diplomatic and security benefits in return for full denuclearisation.

Under the current phase it was to disable its main plutonium-producing plants and declare all nuclear activities by the end of 2007.

The North, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, says it submitted the declaration last November. But the United States says it has not accounted for the suspected uranium programme or for alleged proliferation to Syria.

Hill said in Seoul Wednesday that the United States knows that the North "was engaged in the procurements of things for uranium enrichment."

He added: "We need to know the status of that. Also, we need to know what is going on with any foreign nuclear cooperation."