N.Korea says has US word on coming off terror list

JAPAN: North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator has insisted that the United States promised to remove Pyongyang from a list of states sponsoring terrorism, a report said Wednesday.

The United States has said that North Korea is moving towards coming off the blacklist but that a decision depends on further steps to give up its nuclear weapons programmes. “Something has already been promised,” North Korean top negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan said when asked if Washington would lift Pyongyang from the list, as quoted by Japan’s Jiji Press.

“I do not feel this is new,” he said Tuesday as he flew out of Geneva following talks with his US counterpart, according to Jiji.

Under a six-nation deal reached in February, the United States agreed to start the process of taking North Korea off the list.

Pyongyang, which conducted its first atomic weapons test last year, committed under the February accord to declare and disable its nuclear facilities.

Apart from mandating US sanctions, inclusion on the US terror sponsor list also means the impoverished state is blocked from receiving loans from multilateral bodies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Tokyo, Wednesday, AFP