The UN Security Council is expected to formally adopt a new resolution imposing additional sanctions on North Korea this week as key members of the council have reached an agreement on a draft, sources said.

The draft, which was finalized last week after months of negotiations between the United States and China, has since been handed over to three other veto-holding permanent members of the council -- Britain, France and China -- for review.

"Key members have reached an agreement, and what's left is agreement by all members of the Security Council," a source said on condition of anonymity, referring to the five permanent members.

"Once agreement is reached between key members, the remaining process is nothing but a formality."

The five permanent members of the council plan to hold closed-door consultations Monday to finalize the draft. That means that the council is expected to hold a plenary meeting Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

After the North's fifth nuclear test on Sept. 9, the Security Council immediately vowed to impose fresh sanctions on Pyongyang, but has been unable to do so as the US and China have struggled to narrow differences on how strong new sanctions should be.

The main point of contention in the negotiations was the US demand for banning all of North Korea's exports of coal, a key source of hard currency for the communist regime, including exports for "livelihood purposes," which was excluded in the previous sanctions.

Closing the loophole was the main US goal in the negotiations, but China has balked at it.

The compromise the two sides reached in the upcoming resolution is to put a cap on North Korea's total exports of coal at 750 million tons or US$400.9 million, according to a Reuters report that cited unidentified UN diplomats.

The cap would cut the North's annual revenues from coal exports by some $700 million, it said.

In addition, the envisioned resolution also tightens screws in the maritime and financial sectors, which could cut the North's revenues by about $100 million a year, according to the report.

In total, the resolution could reduce the North's annual revenues by $800 million.

"When Resolution 2270 was adopted, we expected it would deal a blow as strong as this, but it wasn't that much effective due to the loopholes," a Security Council source said, referring to the resolution that was adopted in March in response to the North's fourth nuclear test.

Also making the resolution less effective was the hike in global coal prices due in part to coal mine closures in Australia.

The forthcoming resolution also imposes sanctions on 11 North Korean officials and 10 entities, including Pyongyang's ambassadors to Egypt and Myanmar, and bans the North's exports of helicopters, ships and statues, according to the Reuters report.

It also requires UN member nations to reduce the number of officials at North Korea's foreign missions and limit the number of bank accounts to one per North Korean diplomatic mission and one per diplomat, according to the report.

Should the resolution be adopted this week, it would come more than 80 days after the North's fifth nuclear test. That underlines the difficulty persuading China to agree to strong sanctions on its communist neighbor.

China is North Korea's last-remaining major ally, and a key provider of food and fuel supplies. But it has been reluctant to use its influence over Pyongyang for fears that pushing the regime too hard could result in instability in the North and hurt Chinese national interests.

Analysts say that China often increased pressure on the North in the past, too, especially when Pyongyang defied international appeals, and carried out nuclear tests and other provocative acts, but China never went as far as to cause real pain to the North. (Yonhap)