The United States decided today that fuel oil deliveries to North Korea under a 1994 agreement would end once a shipment that is now en route arrived, a senior U.S. official said.
The announcement comes after Pyongyang's admission of the existence a secret nuclear weapons program.
"The November shipment is the last one... The one on the seas now will be allowed to go ahead. Then there is no more," a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said President George W. Bush's National Security Council made the decision to end the supplies at a White House meeting and that allies Japan, South Korea and the European Union were expected to concur.
The Bush administration had no immediate official comment.
The U.S. decision was made ahead of a meeting on Thursday of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, which handles the oil deliveries and has the authority to determine the program's schedule.
In October North Korea acknowledged it had a covert program to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient of nuclear weapons. It has threatened to withdraw from the Agreed Framework if the fuel oil shipments are halted.