"The agreement that we have reached today on energy cooperation between Japan and the United States has become an important turning point in the global history of energy policy," Amari told reporters with Bodman by his side.

The plan is to be completed by April.

Details "will be not announced and worked out for another two or three months," Bodman said.

But Amari said Japan would provide financial backing for putting up the new nuclear power plants in the United States.

More than 30 such plants are reportedly under consideration following a policy change by President George W. Bush's administration promoting their construction.

"We are now considering providing public financing, including export credit for the construction of new power plants in the United States," Amari said.

The Japanese government will also provide trade insurance for firms scheduled to join US nuclear power plant construction, Japanese newspapers have reported.

Trade insurance would compensate firms for losses suffered from overseas investment and trading.

The US government, on the other hand, will provide debt guarantees under the agreement, the reports said.

US financial institutions are said to be reluctant to extend loans for nuclear construction projects to American companies because they lacked experience in the field.

Bodman and Amari said in a joint statement that the action plan "will provide a framework for collaboration" between the world's top two richest countries and energy consumers.

It would focus on research and development activities under the so-called Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative built upon the "significant" civilian nuclear energy technical cooperation already underway," they said.

It would also involve "collaboration on policies and programs that support the construction of new nuclear power plants and regulatory and non proliferation-related exchanges, they said.

"We expect that to involve largely technical efforts to make use of the considerable skills of Japanese scientists and engineers to work on various aspects of the global nuclear energy partnership," Bodman said.

"That involve in its simplest terms the reprocessing of spent fuel, the conversion of transuranic elements into fuel elements, the design of and development of a fast reactor to burn those fast fuel and recycling of fuel from the fast reactor - four part," he said.

Bodman said the United States expected significant cooperation from Japan as "they have considerable skills to bring to bear in a number of those areas."

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