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Washigtion, Thursday (AFP) The United States will Thursday tell Japan and South Korea it plans to halt heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea mandated by a 1994 pact, after Pyongyang revealed its continuing quest for nuclear weapons, senior US officials said.

The program will end after delivery of the latest shipment of 42,000 tons of oil, currently on a tanker steaming for the isolated and energy-starved Stalinist state, the officials said.

Negotiators from the three allies, together with the European Union, will convene the Executive Board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization in New York Thursday, five weeks after North Korea's stunning revelation.

The 1994 deal, known as the Agreed Framework, promised to provide two nuclear power reactors to North Korea financed by KEDO, an international consortium, plus 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil a year, in return for a freeze on the Stalinist state's nuclear weapons program.

But Washington considers that Pyongyang nullified the pact, after confessing to a US envoy last month that it was trying to build nuclear weapons with enriched uranium.

White House officials meeting decided to permit the delivery of the latest shipment but to block all future loads, a senior US official speaking privately said. 

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