North Korea to reveal its nukes; ties with U.S. may improve

WASHINGTON — North Korea today is set to deliver a long-awaited declaration detailing its nuclear-weapons programs, a potential breakthrough in a 17-year global effort to curb its nuclear development.

It would be the most significant advance in relations between North Korea and the United States and its allies in six decades.

North Korea's tally of its weapons work, to be delivered first to China, which has been leading nuclear negotiations involving six countries, will trigger a rapid series of events rare in the normally slow-moving diplomacy that eventually could lead to diplomatic relations between the United States and the isolated communist nation.

Also today, President Bush is expected to announce he intends to remove North Korea from the U.S. government's list of nations that sponsor terrorism and waive it from the provisions of the Trading With the Enemy Act, which bars almost all commerce. Cuba would become the only remaining country covered by the act.

The moves would come hours after South Korea on Wednesday marked the 58th anniversary of North Korea's invasion igniting the Korean War, which ended with a truce in 1953 but left the parties technically in a state of war to this day.

The removal of North Korea from the U.S. terrorism list would be a remarkable turnabout in treatment toward a nation Bush once branded part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

As early as Friday, North Korea plans to demolish the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, with the head of the State Department's Korea desk, Sung Kim, on hand to witness.

North Korea has invited foreign television stations to videotape the event, said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

The moves are major steps in implementing a series of pacts in which North Korea agrees to give up its nuclear arms in return for economic, security and political rewards.

But the diplomacy faces significant skepticism in Congress, from presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain and from Japan, America's closest ally in northeast Asia.

It remains uncertain whether impoverished, isolated North Korea will ever give up its suspected arsenal of a half-dozen or so nuclear devices, which it's not required to do at this stage.

In an effort to pre-empt criticism, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that most sanctions on North Korea would remain in place.

"It may very well be the case North Korea does not want to give up its nuclear weapons and its programs. That is a very real possibility," Rice said in a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. "But we and our partners should test it."

Rice emphasized that the United States has given North Korea relatively little aid so far — 134,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and the release of $25 million in regime funds that had been frozen in a Macau bank.

While the Trading With the Enemy Act would no longer apply to North Korea, she said, "just about every restriction that might be lifted will be, in fact, kept in place because of different U.S. laws and regulations."

North Korea would still be under U.N. sanctions imposed after its October 2006 nuclear test and under U.S. sanctions levied in response to human-rights, proliferation and human-trafficking concerns.

Further, U.S. companies won't be able to get Export-Import Bank financing to do business there.

Bush's removal of North Korea from the terrorism list will take effect Aug. 11 unless Congress blocks it. The White House could reverse the step, Rice said, if North Korea's declaration of its nuclear programs and facilities proves incomplete, or if the country impedes inspections to verify it.

"The signs are Congress will not oppose the coming agreement," said Larry Niksch, a veteran North Korea analyst at the Library of Congress.

The U.S. government says North Korea hasn't sponsored a terrorist act in 21 years, since the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner.

But its removal from the terrorism list is straining U.S. ties with Japan, which has urged Bush to wait until North Korea accounts for Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s and '80s.

After Libya renounced its nuclear-weapons program in 2003, the U.S. eventually resumed diplomatic relations with Moammar Gadhafi's regime. The State Department has urged similar declarations from North Korea and Syria.

North Korea's declaration probably won't address allegations that it helped Syria build a nuclear reactor — which Israel bombed in September — or that it covertly pursued an alternate route to nuclear weapons involving highly enriched uranium.

In a report earlier this year, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated the North has between 61 and 110 pounds of plutonium, which could be enough to build six to 10 bombs. The North proved it could build a working nuclear bomb when it carried out an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006.

Additional information from The Associated Press and Seattle Times archives