Ahead of the declaration, Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy on North Korea, briefed his counterparts from Japan and South Korea before flying to China, the host of six-nation talks on the communist state's disarmament.

North Korea last year agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for badly needed energy aid and diplomatic benefits. But it missed a deadline to fully declare its nuclear programmes by the end of last year.

"We are looking to receive the declaration soon," Hill said after talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and the Japanese and South Korean nuclear envoys. "We've done a lot of work on it."

Komura hinted the declaration may not be as thorough as previously hoped.

"The Japanese government believes that a complete declaration is necessary for complete abolition" of the North's nuclear weapons, Komura told reporters.

"But there's a view that it's better to ease the stalemate and move forward, even by lowering (the hurdle) for the sake of reaching our goal of denuclearisation," Komura said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting diplomatic sources, said the declaration was expected to be delivered around June 26.

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 Yonhap.

The United States has pressed North Korea, which tested an atom bomb in 2006, to clear up allegations that it helped Syria build a nuclear facility and ran a secret plutonium programme.

The United States reportedly earlier agreed to let North Korea simply acknowledge the allegations without confirming them.

The reports triggered a backlash among conservatives in the United States. They accused US President George W. Bush, who once branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil," of rushing to secure deal in his last months in office.

In exchange for the nuclear declaration, the United States is expected to move forward with removing Pyongyang from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Japan, which has taken the hardest line on North Korea in six-nation talks, has been strongly critical of the move due to a row over Pyongyang's kidnappings of Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.

North Korea is eager to be delisted, which would open up the impoverished communist state to US aid and loans from international financial institutions.

In a turnaround, it agreed last week to Japan's demands to reinvestigate the kidnappings, leading Tokyo to lift some of its sanctions on North Korea. But Japan still refused to deliver its aid under the disarmament deal.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda saw US ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer on Friday afternoon and said "the abduction issue is important for Japan" in considering the delisting.

After meeting with Fukuda, Schieffer told reporters: "North Korea agreed to reopen the investigation. So we encourage the North Koreans to follow their words with actions."

Kim Sook, the South Korean envoy on North Korea's disarmament, said the meeting in Tokyo did not discuss the date for the next round of six-nation talks.

"But we will try to consult as closely as we can and to try our best to make a head-of-delegation meeting realised as soon as possible," Kim said.

The last round of six-way talks, which also involve Russia, took place in September last year.

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