The report by Asahi Shimbun follows allegations that the United States may scuttle an international project to build light-water reactors in North Korea, a deal contingent on the Stalinist state's adherence to a pact freezing its nuclear arms programme.

North Korea publicly declared this month it was seeking nuclear weapons.

A senior US administration official said Washington would help establish a "voluntary alliance" of countries that would boost inspections of ships and aicraft against the hardware shipments, the Japanese daily said.

Leaders of the 11-country bloc are the United States, Japan and Australia, which met in Madrid on June 12 to plot strategies to thwart the spread of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and missile components, the influential daily quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain have confirmed they would make best use of existing laws to intercept such exports, the official said.

The countries were to meet July 9-10 in Australia to plan better cooperation in tracking the shipments.

China and Russia, both with close links to North Korea, were to be consulted by the United States in an effort to pursue "stronger action," based on a UN resolution, to halt weapons exports, the official said.

In December, the Spanish navy stopped and searched a suspected North Korean freighter in the Mediterranean found to be carrying 15 North Korean Scud missiles to Yemen, but US forces had no legal right to seize the cargo as the ship was intercepted in international waters.

Meanwhile, US allegations over the weekend indicated Washington would suspend the nuclear reactor project, despite caution expressed by South Korea and Japan.

On Friday, US Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker said that if Pyongyang does not dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, "it is unlikely that the United States would support the completion of those reactors beyond the commitments that we've undertaken in the framework agreement."

But earlier Saturday, Asahi quoted a senior US official who said the United States would decide "on its own" whether to halt the reactor project.

Construction of the light-water reactors started in August under a 1994 "framework agreement" between Pyongyang and Washington designed to end the North's nuclear arms ambitions.

The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) -- which groups the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union -- was created to build the reactors, which would produce significantly less weapons-grade nuclear material than a nuclear plant constructed during the Soviet era.

"I think we have only a few months, two or three months, and then KEDO will become, essentially, history," Kenneth Quinones, a former US State Department official involved in the framework talks, said in an interview published in the Daily Yomiuri Sunday.

"The Bush administration has provided administrative support until the end of August," said Quinones, who now serves as the Korean affairs director for the non-governmental International Center in Washington.

"Once the US stops supporting KEDO, KEDO's dead."

WAR.WIRE