Lifting NKorea sanctions to take time US official

TOKYO, March 2 (Reuters) Lifting sanctions against North Korea will take time and require Pyongyang's compliance with a deal reached last month leading to its nuclear disarmament, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said today.

The landmark agreement, reached last month, requires the secretive communist state to shut down the reactor at the heart of its nuclear ambitions and allow international inspections.

The accord also calls for concessions by the United States, with Washington saying it would resolve within 30 days a dispute over frozen North Korean bank accounts in Macau and consider removing Pyongyang from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan is due in Washington next week to discuss normalising ties with the United States, also part of the February 13 agreement.

''When it comes to such issues as lifting of sanctions or delisting North Korea from the sponsors of terrorism list, those are issues that we have simply agreed to begin to discuss as part of the process that was launched by this initial actions agreement,'' Negroponte told a news conference in Tokyo.

He added that the process would take time but did not give a specific timeframe.

''We think there are many other aspects of compliance with this agreement that would have to have moved forward substantially before you could expect significant movement on an issue such as removal of sanctions or the delisting,'' he said.

The deal hammered out in Beijing by the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China after nearly a week of talks is seen as only the starting point for locating and dismantling North Korea's nuclear projects.

North Korea has said that improving ties with Japan and the United States was a key prerequisite to dismantling its nuclear arms programme, which it says was for self-defence.

North Korea had long refused to take part in six-party talks in protest over frozen funds in a Macau bank, but a senior US Treasury official said on Monday the department was ready to begin steps to resolve the dispute.

North Korea and Japan are also set to start talks in Hanoi next week on normalising ties.

Negroponte, making his first trip to Asia since taking up his post last month, has met Japanese officials in Tokyo, including Foreign Minister Taro Aso. He next heads to China and South Korea.

REUTERS SP ND1630