SEOUL, South Korea - Wachovia Bank said Thursday that it was considering a US government request to help transfer $25 million to North Korea, a move aimed at paving the way for DPRK to shut down its nuclear program.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia was asked "by the US State Department to help them process an interbank transfer of funds held at other banks, which are the subject of negotiations with North Korea," bank spokeswoman Christy Phillips-Brown said.

"We have agreed to consider this request and our discussions with various government officials are continuing," she said.

An official familiar with the long-running dispute over the North Korean money said this month that the government had asked for permission to use an American bank to transfer the funds from a lender in Macau.

The North Koreans wanted to use an American bank because they think the transaction would help secure their continued access to the global financial system, the official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the record to the media.

The Macau bank had been blacklisted by the US over an accusation that it helped North Korea launder and counterfeit money.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack acknowledged the request to Wachovia but declined to offer specifics.

"We'll only reiterate that we all hope that this issue can be resolved," he said.

The North Korean money was frozen in 2005 when the US government accused Macau's Banco Delta Asia of being a "willing pawn" in DPRK's money laundering and counterfeiting operations. Macau's government took control of the bank and refused to release the North's money.

Because of the funds issue, the North boycotted talks on its nuclear program for more than a year, during which it conducted its first test of a nuclear bomb.

Washington helped unblock the funds earlier this year to win the North's promise to start dismantling its nuclear weapons programs, but North Korea has not withdrawn the money.

North Korea missed an April deadline to close its Yongbyon nuclear reactor under the agreement with the US and other nations, but has said its commitment to the deal remains unchanged.

The official familiar with the issue told the AP that Pyongyang could easily withdraw the money as cash and ship it back to North Korea but wanted to use an American bank as a transfer point. Once the money was moved to a US lender, it would be sent to a bank in a third country, he said.

The US Treasury Department had put Banco Delta Asia on the US government's money-laundering blacklist and cut it off from the US financial system, a power provided by the USA Patriot Act.

As a result, it was unclear whether the US could bend its rules and allow North Korea to use an American bank to transfer the money to another lender.