New York: With the row over North Korea's nuclear programme hotting up, the United States is planning imposition of sanctions and halting weapons shipments to the Stalinist regime, besides cutting off money supply from Koreans in Japan, a media report on February 17 said.

However, the Bush administration has no plans to push for the sanctions soon, as the United States' Pacific allies still oppose the idea and the UN Security Council likely to remain focused on Iraq for weeks, the 'New York Times' reported quoting officials.

The Pentagon and State Department are developing detailed plans for sanctions, and perhaps other actions, so that the United States has a forceful response ready in case North Korea takes aggressive new steps toward developing nuclear weapons, it said.

The general belief in the administration is that North Korea would soon resume testing its long-range missiles or start reprocessing nuclear fuel for weapons production.

The US is also worried over North Korea pushing forward with weapons production in the event of Washington launching an attack on Pyongyang.

"If they start to dismantle their weapons programmes, then we can talk about incentives," a senior administration official said. "But if they torque up the pressure, you're looking at the other direction. That's when sanctions become much more likely."

The official said the possibility of sanctions would be part of a broader diplomatic campaign intended to get North Korea to step back from its nuclear programmes.

The first step will be to urge the Security Council, perhaps in the next two weeks, to condemn North Korea's recent steps toward nuclear weaponry, which have included withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and restarting a mothballed reactor at Yongbyon that can produce weapons-grade plutonium.

The United States will also continue pressing Russia and China, major trading partners and providers of foreign aid to North Korea, to take a more active role in pressuring North Korea to dismantle its programmes, the official told the 'Times'.

Both countries have said they will not support sanctions yet, contending that less confrontational approaches should be given more time.

North Korea has said it would consider sanctions an act of war.

Precisely because Russia and China, as well as South Korea and Japan, have been unwilling to support cutting off trade with North Korea, the 'Times' said, the United States is looking at more tailored sanctions that will focus on banned activities like smuggling drugs or proliferating weapons. Iraq and other countries has been a major source of foreign currency for the impoverished North Korea, American officials contend.

PTI