The plan is aimed at helping states to assess and eradicate vulnerabilities at nuclear installations, to recover missing highly-radioactive sources, to respond to guerrilla acts, and other activities to prevent potential attacks on nuclear facilities or the use of nuclear material for attacks.

"There is wide recognition that the international physical protection regime needs to be strengthened," the IAEA Board of Governors said in a statement, adding that it would ask member states to urgently come up with the funds for the programme. The IAEA measures will require around $32 million annually, and a number of countries - including Australia, Britain, the United States, Japan, Netherlands and Slovenia - have already pledged money to support the plan.

Much of the money would be used to help countries without the necessary funds to make urgently needed security upgrades.

"National measures for protecting nuclear material and facilities are uneven in their substance and application," the board said.

READY FOR INSPECTIONS IN NORTH KOREA

ElBaradei also told the board that the agency also hoped to begin performing full inspections of facilities in North Korea, named by U.S. President George W. Bush as one of the three states he calls an "axis of evil". The other two states are Iran and Iraq. Communist North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994, and the agency has been unable to conduct thorough plant inspections since then.

However, ElBaradei said North Korea had given permission for IAEA experts to visit an isotope laboratory in Nyongbyon in January. Also, North Korean officials had observed the agency perform a calibration of a spent fuel counter earlier this month.

"These are small but welcome steps on the part of North Korea which I hope will be followed by a gradual return to full inspection," ElBaradei said.

North Korea agreed a framework accord with the U.S. after leaving the IAEA in which it committed itself to freezing its plutonium production programme.

In return, Washington agreed to replace the state's graphite-moderated reactors with two light-water reactors, which are less useful in making bomb-grade material.

A condition of the deal was that North Korea would allow the IAEA to inspect several nuclear waste sites and make sure all plutonium was under international safeguards. Without these inspections, the nuclear reactors cannot be completed.