The United States may be willing to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism before Pyongyang completely halts its nuclear programs, a chief U.S. negotiator said Thursday.U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was speaking ahead of talks with NorthKorean officials in Geneva that are expected to focus on a variety of commitments made by Pyongyang under a February 13th “six-party” agreement by the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.The weekend talks between Hill and North Korea's top nuclear negotiator Kim Gye-gwan will cover official normalization of relations between the two countries. The United States and North Korea have not formally ended the state of war that existed between them during the 1950-1953 Korean War.The talks will also cover the commitments made by both sides in the February 13 deal, including Washington's decision to begin the process of removing Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. While on the list, North Korea is subject to a ban on arms-related sales, prohibitions on some types of U.S. aid and U.S. opposition to it receiving World Bank and other loans.Hill declined to say exactly what North Korea needed to do before being removed from the list but suggested this could happen before it completely gives up its nuclear programs.“We're going to have a discussion about things that they need to do and, you know, how far we're going to expect to see denuclearization go in order to move or to continue the process that we are committed to doing, which is to remove them from the terrorism list,” Hill told reporters.North Korea has already shut down its nuclear reactor complex at Yongbyon and received 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil as called for by the February 13 deal, but must now provide a full declaration of any nuclear weapons it has and the highly enriched uranium (HEU) program Washington believes it has. Analysts believe this step will be harder to accomplish. North Korea has yet to acknowledge whether it has an HEU program, which could provide it with a second path to a nuclear weapon, Hill said. The weekend talks are also likely to discuss the fate of a number of Japanese citizens Tokyo says were abducted by North Korea.
