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It seems North Korea will still be on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism when the U.S. State Department sends its annual report on international terrorism to the U.S. Congress, State Department sources said Tuesday.
A department official said that Libya was dropped from the list on June 30, 2006, two and a half years after it had given up on the development of weapons of mass destruction. It could take time to remove the North from the list, he added.
Delisting North Korea will take at least 45 days. In the most likely scenario, the Bush administration will guarantee to Congress that North Korea has not supported international terrorism and that it has accepted North Korea¡¯s pledge not to do so. Then the administration must submit a delisting proposal to Congress 45 days before the nation can be removed from the list.
However, the State Department is expected to submit its report in just one month, and the Bush administration is unlikely to give any such guarantee on North Korea yet because there is still some mistrust, said diplomatic sources in Washington.
The six-nation nuclear agreement reached in Beijing on Feb. 13 doesn¡¯t include a concrete deadline for North Korea's removal from the list but only requires the U.S. to begin the process.
Criticism is growing within the Bush administration after North Korea boycotted the latest six-nation talks because of a problem transferring its assets from the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia.
The State Department is reportedly planning to hold up the delisting process until after six-way ministerial-level talks convene in mid-April. Those talks will judge North Korea's progress in shutting down its nuclear facilities in accordance with the Feb. 13 agreement.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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