US may take N Korea off terror list

North Korea said on Monday the United States had agreed to remove it from its list of countries that support terrorism, a move Pyongyang has long sought to receive more aid and hopefully end its status as a global pariah.

The chief US negotiator has hinted that Washington could remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism before it completely gives up its nuclear arms programme. But his government has not said it has decided to strike Pyongyang from the list, which currently also includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

North Korea said it agreed in talks at the weekend in Geneva with the United States to take “practical measures to neutralise the existing nuclear facilities in the DPRK (North Korea) within this year,” its KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. “In return for this, the US decided to take such political and economic measures for compensation as delisting the DPRK as a terrorism sponsor,” the unnamed spokesman was cited as saying.