(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-04-12 10:38

WASHINGTON  -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied on Friday a report that the United States had reached an agreement with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over the latter's nuclear program.

"We are not yet at a point where we can make a judgement as to whether or not the North Koreans have met their obligations," Rice said here at a news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank- Walter Steinmeier.

"And we are therefore not at a point at which the United States can make a judgement as to whether or not it's time to exercise our obligations."

Rice made the remarks after the Washington Post reported Friday that the United States is prepared to lift two key economic sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) under a tentative deal reached with that country this week.

The reported agreement requires the DPRK to finish disabling its main nuclear facility and provide a full accounting of its stockpile of plutonium.

But, in a key shift, the two sides agreed to sidestep a dispute over how much detail Pyongyang must provide about any past uranium enrichment-related activities and its involvement in a mysterious Syrian facility bombed by Israel last September, the newspaper said.

In addition, under the agreement, Pyongyang would also be freed from financial sanctions imposed by the Trading With the Enemy Act, a 1917 law that allows for a near-total economic boycott of countries at war with the United states.

Pyongyang announced Wednesday that it has reached consensus with the United States on nuclear declaration. "A consensus was reached on the US measure to make political compensation and the nuclear declaration," the official news agency KCNA quoted a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry as saying.

Disagreement over the DPRK's nuclear declaration, which was due by the end of last year, has deadlocked the six-nation nuclear talks which also involved South Korea, Russia, China and Japan.

Washington suspected Pyongyang of having a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons and proliferating nuclear technology, and wanted those issues to be addressed in the declaration. The DPRK denied the speculation.

Top US negotiator Christopher Hill, after talks with DPRK Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan in Singapore on Tuesday, said they had made progress towards resuming stalled negotiations over the DPRK nuclear program.