NORTH KOREA:North Korea proudly trumpeted the news yesterday it is a rogue nation no more, saying the United States had agreed to remove it from its list of countries that support terrorism.
This was a move long sought by Pyongyang to better its status with the outside world and to soothe its fears that Washington planned an invasion of North Korea, which President Bush once named as part of his "axis of evil".
North Korea has long insisted that its status as pariah nation was a stumbling block in negotiations for it to give up its nuclear weapons programme.
Pyongyang has been on the US terrorism list since a North Korean agent confessed to involvement in the mid-air explosion of a South Korean passenger airplane over the sea off Burma (Myanmar) in 1987, killing all 115 people on board.
Being on the list means a ban on arms-related sales, denies the economically-isolated country US economic aid and means the US vetoes any loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions.
There have been hints in recent days that Washington's position may ease.
Christopher Hill, Washington's chief negotiator in the six-party talks involving both Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan aimed at resolving the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula, has hinted of late that the US could remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism before it completely gives up its nuclear arms programme.
However, Mr Hill said his government has yet to decide on striking Pyongyang from the list, which also includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
This stance was confirmed late yesterday by a US state department official in Seoul.
But North Korea was in less cautious mode. Pyongyang agreed in talks at the weekend in Geneva with the US to take "practical measures to neutralise the existing nuclear facilities in the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) within this year", the official KCNA news agency reported.
"In return for this, the US decided to take such political and economic measures for compensation as delisting the DPRK as a terrorism sponsor and lifting all sanctions that have been applied according to the Trading with the Enemy Act," it said.
North Korea has come a long way since it tested missiles in July last year and then one year ago tested its first nuclear weapons, forcing UN sanctions and general international disapproval.