SAVANNAH - 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 condition of anonymity.

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 UN resolution to criminalize proliferation activity and would suggest reforms at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN 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 programmes.

The Bush administration aide said the deal agreed by the G8 - the US, 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: "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)."

"You will see an expansion of the PSI (proliferation security initiative)," he said. Under this initiative, law enforcement agencies of PSI countries would board suspect ships on the high seas and raid laboratories to seize possible caches of illegal weapons.

Wilkinson listed other areas where agreement had been reached - proposals to fight famine in the Horn of Africa, a commitment to wipe out polio by the end of 2005, private-sector efforts to fight poverty and the development of a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.

The saturation deployment of security forces around Sea Island and the town of Savannah 80 miles (120km) away where most media are based appeared to have deterred protesters who have in the past seized on such events to push their causes.

In the only legally approved demonstration in Savannah, about 200 people ranging from civil rights activists to young anarchists with masks and anti-abortion campaigners marched to denounce the war in Iraq, the US Patriot Act on domestic security and G8 policies which they said benefited the rich and hurt the poor.

(Agencies via Xinhua)