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WASHINGTON: The United States on Saturday removed North Korea from its terror blacklist after reaching an agreement on nuclear verification measures, a State Department spokesman said.
"Every element of verification that we sought is included in this package," said State Department Sean McCormack as he announced that North Korea had been removed from the US terrorism blacklist.
"It's an important point. Every single thing that we sought going in is part of this package," McCormack told reporters.
Earlier, US negotiator Christopher Hill, representing the powers in the negotiations, told AFP that the deal had been reached during an October 1-3 visit to Pyongyang.
The agreement on verification measures paved the way for the US government to strike North Korea from its terror blacklist.
The team led by Hill agreed with the North Koreans that the verification steps will "apply to the plutonium-based program and any uranium enrichment and proliferation activities," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Hill and his counterparts also agreed that experts from all six parties – the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia – "may participate in verification activities, including experts from non-nuclear states", he said.
They also agreed that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "will have an important consultative and support role in verification" the official added.
Under the deal, "experts will have access to all declared facilities and, based on mutual consent, to undeclared sites", he said.
There was also "agreement on the use of scientific procedures, including sampling and forensic activities", according to the official who later released the details in a statement to journalists covering the State Department.
The statement said agreement on "these verification measures has been codified in a joint document between the United States and North Korea and certain other understandings, and has been reaffirmed through intensive consultations".
The agreement comes after "a last round" of telephone consultations on Friday between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her partners in the six-party negotiations, another official said.
According to reports on Friday, both sides had virtually reached an agreement that the North would resume disabling its Yongbyon atomic complex in return for being taken off the list.
Yongbyon was shut down in July 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament deal agreed by the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan after the North staged its first nuclear weapons test in October 2006.
Washington has insisted on an agreement on procedures to verify the disarmament process before it can drop the North from the terror list, which blocks some bilateral and multilateral aid.
But Pyongyang, angered at the delay, has been preparing to restart Yongbyon, which made plutonium for nuclear bombs.
North Korea was added to the list on January 20, 1988, following the bombing by its agents of a KAL plane on November 29, 1987 which killed all 115 on board. The State Department said the North is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since that bombing.
The plane was en route from Baghdad to Seoul via Bangkok when it blew up over the Andaman Sea. Two North Korean agents had boarded in Baghdad and got off during a stopover in Abu Dhabi, having left a time bomb in an overhead compartment. They were arrested when they tried to leave Bahrain using fake Japanese passports.
Both immediately swallowed cyanide capsules. The man, later identified as 70-year-old Kim Sung Il, died almost instantly, but the female suspect, 26-year-old Kim Hyon-Hui, survived.
She was brought to Seoul, where she confessed and alleged that Kim Jong-Il had personally commanded her mission. She was sentenced to death but later reprieved and published a book entitled "Tears of My Soul" describing her training at a North Korean spy school.
She donated the proceeds to families of victims of the bombing and still lives in South Korea at an undisclosed address.
The apparent aim of the bombing was to deter spectators from attending the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
- AFP/ls/so
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