Washington:The United States is striking North Korea from a terrorism blacklist, US officials said today, as Washington worked furiously to salvage a historic nuclear disarmament deal. The State Department will announce at 11 a.m. (local time) the decision to remove Pyongyang from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism now that there is agreement on steps to verify its nuclear disarmament, US officials said. US officials said the verification includes both the plutonium programme as well as any uranium enrichment and proliferations activities. Some news reports said the suspected uranium and proliferation activities were not included.

Angry at Washington's refusal to delist it, Pyongyang in the last few weeks vowed to restart its Yongbyon nuclear reactor that it shut down under a landmark deal in 2007 and has taken tangible steps toward doing so. But the way now appeared clear for North Korea to revive the disarmament process. "We ve agreed to a series of verification measures, and flowing from that we can now remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism," a US administration official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

The agreement comes after "a last round" of telephone consultations yesterday between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her partners in the six-party negotiations, another official said. The official did not specify to whom Rice spoke, but her partners in the negotiations are North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. He said the consultations were in addition to the telephone conversations Rice had early yesterday with her counterparts Hirofumi Nakasone of Japan, Yu Myung-Hwan of South Korea and Yang Jiechi of China.

 

Source : PTI