Agence France-Presse,
SYDNEY: US negotiator Christopher Hill said Tuesday that North Korea must do more to dismantle its nuclear programme before it is taken off a list of states sponsoring terrorism, a US official with him said.
“Their getting off that list will depend on further denuclearisation,” he was quoted as saying by an official travelling with him.
North Korea said Monday that the United States has decided to remove it from a list of states sponsoring terrorism — a crucial step towards the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
A foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency that the US decision came at a weekend meeting between the chief nuclear negotiators of the two countries in Geneva.
“Both sides discussed the issue of taking practical measures to neutralise the existing nuclear facilities in the DPRK (North Korea) within this year and agreed on them,” the spokesman said.
“In return for this the US decided to take such political and economic measures for compensation as delisting the DPRK as a terrorism sponsor and lifting all sanctions that have been applied according to the Trading with the Enemy Act,” he said.
Apart from mandating US sanctions, inclusion on the US terror sponsor list also means the impoverished state is blocked from receiving loans from multilateral bodies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
The North has been on the US list since one of its agents blew up a South Korean passenger jet in 1987, apparently in an attempt to disrupt preparations for the Seoul Olympics the following year.
