Spencer Abraham

IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming confirmed top-level talks are planned on a global clean-up of highly enriched uranium from civilian reactors.

"There are major initiatives by the U.S., and Secretary of Energy Abraham is coming to Vienna the week after next to announce new U.S. measures to attack that problem," she said.

The United States is already financing a program to send weapons-grade uranium from Eastern Europe and former Soviet states back to Russia.

Experts fear many of the reactors are run-down and poorly guarded, making them a possible target for terrorists.

At the end of last year, a U.S.-led team evacuated highly enriched uranium from an inactive research reactor in Bulgaria, and flew it to Russia, where it was blended down as reactor fuel. Similar joint operations with the IAEA have taken weapons-grade uranium from reactors in Romania and Serbia.

Now, the United States is planning to have large quantities of highly enriched uranium in reactors in Ukraine and Belarus processed as well, and talks are under way with Uzbek authorities to take similar security measures at a reactor near the Afghan border.

Analysts at Harvard University say there are hundreds of reactors in the world with highly enriched uranium that could be used by terrorists to make a bomb. Secretary Abraham visited the IAEA headquarters last September, and warned then that nuclear material, if not properly guarded, could fall into the hands of terrorists.