US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said today North Korea needs to do more to dismantle its nuclear programme before it can be removed from the US list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Yesterday, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the United States agreed to take North Korea off the list during bilateral talks in Geneva at the weekend.
"No, they haven't been taken off the terrorism list," Mr Hill said in Sydney, which is hosting the annual meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. He flew in from Geneva, where he had met North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan.
"Their getting off that list will depend on further denuclearisation," added Mr Hill, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Japan's top government spokesman also said Tokyo had not heard of any US decision to take North Korea off the list, which also includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
North Korea was put on Washington's blacklist in January 1988 after a North Korean agent confessed to the 1987 bombing of a South Korean passenger jet over the Indian Ocean that killed all 115 people on board.
Mr Hill said the communist state had agreed to fully account for and disable its nuclear programme by the end of the year.
The blacklist imposes a ban on arms-related sales, keeps North Korea from receiving US economic aid and requires the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions.