SAVANNAH, June 8: Leaders of the industrial world meeting for their annual summit are close to agreement on a plan to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, a senior US official said on Tuesday.

The official said a deal was "imminent" on a proposal that would, among other things, suspend for one year all new transfers of equipment for uranium enrichment and reprocessing.

The Group of Eight summit, hosted by US President George W. Bush behind moat-like security on Sea Island off the Georgia coast, is likely to be dominated by the future of Iraq and a US push to promote democratic and economic reforms in the Middle East.

The official told reporters the weapons deal would include endorsement of a U.N. resolution to criminalize proliferation activity and would suggest reforms at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Concern over the adequacy of current measures to prevent the spread of nuclear technology were raised earlier this year when it emerged that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, had helped North Korea, Libya and Iran with their arms programs.

The Bush administration aide said the deal agreed by the G8 - the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Russia - would "suspend for one year all new transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technology (and) work to implement more permanent controls before the 2005 G8 summit."

At a separate briefing earlier, Jim Wilkinson, US deputy national security adviser for communications, said the Sea Island summit would strengthen the IAEA watch dog role. "I think you'll see that we're very close to agreement on new initiatives to dramatically expand the international community's efforts to go after (weapons of mass destruction)," he said. -Reuters