North Korea in nuclear deal
Updated on 13 February 2007
North Korea agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament under a groundbreaking deal.
The deal struck will bring the impoverished Communist state some $300m worth of aid.
Under the agreement, which was reached by six countries in Beijing after nearly a week of talks, Pyongyang will freeze the reactor at the heart of its nuclear programme and allow international inspections of the site.
The United States also agreed to resolve the issue of frozen North Korean bank accounts in Macau's Banco Delta Asia within 30 days, chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said.
Washington will initiate, under a separate bilateral forum, a process to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, four months after the secretive state's stunning test of a nuclear device. "We think it's a very important first step toward the denuclearization of North Korea and the Korean peninsula," White House spokesman Tony Snow said in Washington.
He said, however, that Pyongyang faces the continuing threat of international sanctions if it reneges on the deal. Hill and North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan warmly shook hands and patted one another's arms during a closing reception.
US trade sanctions, which anger Pyongyang, will also begin to be lifted from a country President George W. Bush once lumped with Iran and Iraq on an "axis of evil."
The proposed plan hammered out by the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia, and China will only be the first step in locating and dismantling North Korea's nuclear arms activities, leaving many questions to future negotiations.
