The agency, quoting diplomatic sources, said the declaration was expected to be delivered around June 26.

It said the United States has agreed to start the process of dropping the North from a terrorism blacklist around the same time.

In a symbolic gesture the North would then blow up the cooling tower at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex, possibly on June 27 or 28. But it was demanding cash in return, according to a South Korean foreign ministry official quoted by the agency.

Seoul's foreign ministry said it was checking the reports.

"North Korea is demanding money from the US and other related nations in return for destroying the cooling tower," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The North and its dialogue partners -- the US, South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan -- are consulting on the issue, he added.

The six-nation talks reached a landmark aid-for-denuclearisation deal in February 2007.

The communist state, which tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006, has been working to make its Yongbyon nuclear plants unusable and was also supposed to declare all its nuclear activities by last December.

Disputes over the declaration have stalled the six-party talks. US suspicions of a secret uranium-enrichment weapons programme and of nuclear proliferation will now reportedly be addressed in a separate document.

The main declaration will cover the production and stockpiling of bomb-making plutonium at the ageing Yongbyon complex.

Yonhap's sources said the North's nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan was highly likely to submit the declaration to his Chinese counterpart, since Beijing hosts the six-party talks.

But it could be presented through other diplomatic channels.

The sources said the United States, South Korea and Japan hope to resume the talks in the first week of July.

Nuclear envoys from the three countries met in Tokyo this week to try to push the talks along. US envoy Christopher Hill was due later Friday in China.

Local media reports say the tower demolition will be handled by US technicians and aired by a US TV network.

The US will start removing the North from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as soon as Pyongyang hands over the declaration.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will travel to Asia next week to pursue the negotiations, said Wednesday that the declaration would come soon.

She said President George W. Bush would then formally inform Congress of plans to remove North Korea from the terror list and waive penalising it under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

"In the next 45 days after that, before those actions go into effect, we would continue to assess the level of North Korean cooperation in helping to verify the accuracy of its declaration," Rice said.

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