‘US, N. Korea compromise on nuke deal’

Seoul, Oct. 10: The US and North Korea have agreed on a compromise to get the communist nation to resume dismantling its nuclear program, a news report said on Friday. The deal also calls for Wash-ington to remove Pyong-yang from the US list of states sponsoring terrorism, a key North Korean demand over which the communist nation has been flouting a disarmament pact, Seoul’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said.

The reported breakthrough was reached when chief US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang last week, the paper said quoting an unnamed South Korean official. It said the US is expected to announce the deal as soon as President George W. Bush approves it.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, also without naming sources, carried a similar report earlier. The reports of a breakthrough contradict an announcement on Thursday by the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA that North Korea has banned its inspectors from the entire Yongbyon nuclear complex. That move was taken as a sign that the North plans to pull out of the disarmament pact.

South Korea’s foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said he has no information on the reports. If confirmed, the deal would cap tension in the nuclear standoff that has spiralled following the North’s decision to abandon the 2007 disarmament-for-aid pact reached in six-nation talks involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, the United States and Russia.

In mid-August, Pyong-yang stopped disabling its Yongbyon nuclear facility and has since worked to restore it. North Korea is angry it has not been removed from the United States terrorism list. The United States has said it would fulfil the obligation only after Pyongyang accepts a plan to verify its nuclear programmes.

—AP

***

N. Korea to be taken off US terror list

Tokyo, Oct. 10: The United States has told Japan that it will remove North Korea from its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations by the end of this month as Washington came to a certain degree of understanding with Pyongyang over the verification of North Korea’s nuclear programmes, Japanese government sources said.

The United States stance goes against Japan’s demand that the United States should not cross North Korea from the list until progress is made over the past abductions of Japanese nationals by Pyong-yang. —Kyodo