N.Korea says US to remove it from terrorism list

SEOUL, Sep 3 (Reuters) North Korea said today the United States had agreed to remove it from its list of countries that support terrorism, a move long sought by Pyongyang to better its status with the outside world.

''The US agreed to take political and economic compensation measures such as deleting our country from the list of terror-supporting nations and fully lifting sanctions imposed under the law on trading with enemy countries,'' its KCNA news agency reported a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

At bilateral talks in Geneva at the weekend, chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said the communist state had agreed to fully account for and disable its nuclear programme. The reclusive state carried out its first nuclear test last October.

''One thing that we agreed on is that the DPRK will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programmes and will disable their nuclear programmes by the end of this year, 2007,'' Hill said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

However, Hill did not say that Washington had agreed to remove North Korea from its list of state that sponsor terrorism.

Pyongyang was put on the US list based on the confession of a North Korean agent over the mid-air explosion of a South Korean passenger jet over the sea off Myanmar in 1987.

Under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the designation imposes a ban on arms-related sales and keeps the economically isolated state from receiving some types of US aid.

After years of diplomatic manoeuvring, North Korea shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor this year, keeping its side of a February six-country deal which promised it energy aid.

It also invited back UN nuclear watchdog personnel for the first time since late 2002 when Pyongyang threw them out of the country after a 1994 disarmament deal collapsed.

REUTERS SYU AS1540