The United States is considering removing North Korea provisionally from a US terrorism blacklist to try to salvage denuclearisation talks, a source close to the negotiations said today.
The source said no final decision had been taken, however, and that an announcement was not likely today, although he did not rule it out.
Asked if the administration was weighing the provisional removal of North Korea from its state sponsors of terrorism list, which imposes a range of sanctions on Pyongyang, the source replied: "It's probably going to happen."
The Bush administration has been scrambling in its final months to salvage a multilateral aid-for-disarmament agreement with North Korea that it has hoped to claim as a rare foreign policy success.
Under the agreement, the United States has made clear that it would remove North Korea from the terrorism list in exchange for Pyongyang providing a "complete and correct" declaration of all its nuclear programmes.
But the deal has become snagged by North Korea's reluctance to accept a verification mechanism allowing the United States or other members of the talks - which include the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia - to verify its declaration.
Reuters