"The tugging trials have been completed and we are awaiting the green light from the canal's authority to move towards its entrance," an official from World Marine, the company in charge of the ship's transit, told AFP.

He said that the former aircraft carrier could enter the canal in the next hours. Its passage through the Suez canal is expected to last at least 15 hours.

The vessel has been stranded outside the entrance to the Suez canal since Greenpeace activists boarded it to protest at the risk the environmental group said was posed by its asbestos insulation to workers who will dismantle it in an Indian scrapyard.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's spokesman, Magdi Radi, earlier told reporters that a report "found that there was no reason, whether naval, environmental or health-related, that could prevent the crossing of the Clemenceau."

The report was prepared by a ministerial committee to respond to fears relayed by the press and the Egyptian parliament over the vessel's possible threat to the environment and human health.

Greenpeace and other activists have been fighting for months to oppose the ship's transfer to India, on the grounds that the scrapyard workers at Alang in northwestern India would be at risk of asbestos poisoning.

The Indian Supreme Court has yet to issue a final ruling on allowing the ship into the country's territorial waters.

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