North Korea: rogue state no more, U.S. says

George Bush today took the first steps to remove North Korea from America's black list of states that sponsor terrorism and the lifting of key sanctions against the secretive regime.

The move followed Pyongyang's long-awaited declaration of nuclear activities a few hours earlier.

US financial sanctions imposed under the Trading With the Enemy Act will be lifted within 45 days, on condition that international inspectors verify the inventory, Bush said.

The US state department will meanwhile start the process of taking North Korea - which Bush once named as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq - off its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

Sanctions will be lifted unless Congress blocks such a move. That is unlikely as the Democratic majority in Congress has supported Bush's diplomatic courtship of Pyongyang.

President Bush is wrong to begin dropping sanctions against North Korea over that nation's nuclear programs, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says.

Bush began lifting some trade actions against the rogue nation after it turned over a document on its nuclear activities. Seven years ago, Bush had included North Korea in his "Axis of Evil."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today expressed "profound disappointment" over the Bush administration's decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The administration would have shown more caution and less haste, Ros-Lehtinen says.

"Even while negotiating the agreement announced today, Pyongyang continued to brazenly assist another state sponsor of terrorism, Syria, in the development of an illicit nuclear program until an Israeli air strike destroyed the facility in the Syrian desert last September," Ros-Lehtinen says.