US to 'take DPRK off terrorist list soon'

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-10 07:45

The United States has told Japan that it will remove the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from its terrorist blacklist this month, Kyodo news agency reported yesterday, quoting unidentified Japanese government sources.

The report follows talks in Tokyo on Wednesday between Japan's top negotiator on DRPK nuclear issues and US special envoy Sung Kim.

Kyodo reported that US envoy Christopher Hill, in talks in the DPRK earlier this month, agreed that Washington would not make verification of Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program or proliferation activities a condition of delisting.

Hill also agreed that first verification of the DPRK's plutonium-related activities listed by Pyongyang in June would be conducted, Kyodo reported.

The United States agreed to continue food support begun in June and asked Japan to consider helping with such humanitarian aid, Kyodo said.

Prime Minister Taro Aso had been informed of the US decision and that Sung Kim had apparently conveyed it to Japan's top negotiator on DPRK nuclear issues, Akitaka Saiki, in talks on Wednesday in Tokyo, Kyodo said.

Japan was prepared to accept the delisting but would decline the request for food aid, taking into consideration that it plans to extend economic sanctions on Pyongyang because of a lack of progress in settling a feud over Japanese citizens kidnapped to the DPRK decades ago, it reported.

IAEA barred

The DPRK yesterday barred UN monitoring throughout its Yongbyon nuclear complex, diplomats said.

"The monitors were told that as of today, they are out, no more access permitted to any facilities in Yongbyon. But as of now they are still in their guesthouse on the premises," a senior diplomat close to the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday.

The DPRK acted exactly two years after its first nuclear weapon test which alarmed the world and spurred crisis diplomacy leading to the groundbreaking disarmament pact in 2007.

Missile test

The DPRK has deployed more than 10 missiles on its west coast for what appears to be an imminent launch, a Republic of Korea (ROK) newspaper said yesterday, two days after the Pyongyang fired two short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea.

It would be an unprecedented test if the DPRK fired all of the surface-to-ship and ship-to-ship missiles, but intelligence sources quoted by the Chosun Ilbo paper said they thought Pyongyang may launch five to seven of them.

The DPRK has forbidden ships to sail in an area in the Yellow Sea until Oct 15 in preparation for the launch, an intelligence source told the paper.

Agencies