WASHINGTON, May 25: The US State Department said on Monday it is looking into a report that North Korea secretly provided Libya with nearly two tons of uranium that can be enriched to nuclear-bomb-grade level.

Richard Boucher, the department's spokesman, told reporters that he believed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be looking into the issue as well.

The New York Times said on Sunday that the IAEA had discovered that a giant cask of uranium hexa fluoride (U6), which is raw material for centrifuges to enrich, had apparently come to Libya from North Korea in early 2001.

Citing unnamed US officials and European diplomats familiar with the intelligence, the Times said that the transaction, if confirmed, would be the first known case in which the North Korean government has sold a key ingredient for manufacturing atomic weapons to another country. -AFP