Seoul/Tokyo - North and South Korea welcomed on Sunday Washington's removal of Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, in return for resumed inspections of its nuclear sites, while Japan responded coldly to the move. In Seoul, South Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Sook responded favourably to the US announcement, saying the move promised important progress towards resolving the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.
In Pyongyang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman also welcomed the US decision telling state-controlled media that North Korea would resume the disablement of its nuclear facilities.
North Korea would also allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the US to inspect the facilities, the ministry said.
It said Pyongyang welcomed that the US was "fulfilling its obligations and has removed us from the list of states supporting terrorism," the ministry spokesman said.
South Korean negotiator Kim said he now expected the case to be that North Korea would soon resume work to dismantle its controversial nuclear facilities.
The measures to this effect could be taken immediately, Kim said, while cautioning that it was North Korea which had the key to making sure the new agreement on supervision is put into practice.
He said that the US decision would not only pave the way for a resumption soon of the six-nation talks, but also could serve as the "spring board" for North Korea ultimately to give up its nuclear programme.
Whether there will be any difficulties will be seen in how Pyongyang shows its readiness to cooperate, Kim said.
The reactions came after the US State Department announcement on Saturday that North Korea had agreed to allow rigorous inspections of all its nuclear activities, in turn with Washington responding by removing the Stalinist state from a terrorism blacklist.
The agreement was brokered after US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill travelled to Pyongyang last week in an effort to break the impasse in implementing the pact to denuclearize the country.
However Japan, long estranged from North Korea over the issue of the abduction of Japanese citizens, reacted frostily to the announcement.
Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said that the US decision to remove North Korea from Washington's blacklist of states that support terrorism was "extremely regrettable."
He made the comments to the Kyodo news agency during Saturday's meeting of G7 finance ministers in Washington.
Nakagawa noted the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Not all of those cases have been resolved.
"I believe abductions amount to terrorist acts," Nakagawa said.
In a separate statement, Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone added that "Japan will do its utmost, in close cooperation with the United States and other countries concerned, to push forward Japan-North Korea relations, including the abduction issue, alongside the nuclear issue."
