US: N.Korea remains on terrorism list
AUSTRALIA: Top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said on
Tuesday North Korea needs to do more to dismantle its nuclear programme
before it can be removed from the list of states that sponsor terrorism,
Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported.
On Monday, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted a
North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the United States
agreed to take North Korea off the list during bilateral talks in Geneva
at the weekend.
“No, they haven’t been taken off the terrorism list,” Kyodo quoted
Hill as saying in Sydney, which is hosting the annual meetings of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
He flew in from Geneva, where he had met North Korean Vice Foreign
Minister Kim Kye-gwan.
“Their getting off that list will depend on further denuclearisation,”
added Hill, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
affairs. Japan’s top government spokesman also said Tokyo had not heard
of any U.S. decision to take North Korea off the list, which currently
also includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
“The United States has told us that there would be no delisting until
(North Korea) disables its nuclear facilities,” Chief Cabinet Secretary
Kaoru Yosano told reporters.
North Korea was put on Washington’s blacklist in January 1988 after a
North Korean agent confessed to the 1987 bombing of a South Korean
passenger jet over the Indian Ocean that killed all 115 people on board.
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,” KCNA
quoted the Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying on Monday.
“In return for this, the U.S. decided to take such political and
economic measures for compensation as delisting the DPRK as a terrorism
sponsor and lifting all sanctions that have been applied according to
the Trading with the Enemy Act,” the unnamed spokesman was quoted as
saying.
Hill said in Geneva that the communist state had agreed to fully
account for and disable its nuclear programme by the end of the year. He
confirmed the delegations had discussed the terms under which Washington
would drop North Korea from its terrorism list.
The blacklist imposes a ban on arms-related sales, keeps the
economically isolated country from receiving U.S. economic aid and
requires the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank and other
international financial institutions.
Tokyo has been pressing Washington not to take the North off the list
until the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in
the past is resolved.
Japan is demanding the return and information of the abductees, but
North Korea insists the issue has been resolved after it allowed a
number of former abductees and their families to return in 2002 and
2004.
Sydney, Tuesday, Reuters
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