The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Washington

The Bush administration looks poised to provisionally remove North Korea from the State Department's terrorism blacklist, perhaps as soon as Friday, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The move would be an effort to keep a nuclear disarmament pact with North Korea from falling apart, the newspaper said in an article posted on its website, quoting sources close to the administration.

The newspaper quoted some sources as saying the delisting could happen as soon as Friday. But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told the Post in an e-mail, " I can assure you that a decision has not been made." North Korea deployed more than 10 missiles on its west coast apparently for an imminent test launch, a South Korean newspaper said on Thursday, and Pyongyang halted U.N. monitoring of its nuclear complex.

The potentially destabilizing actions followed reports the United States had offered to remove North Korea from its terrorism blacklist this month.

U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang last week in a bid to convince North Korea to return to a disarmament-for-aid deal and halt plans to restart an aging nuclear plant that makes bomb-grade plutonium.

The United States urged North Korea not to do anything, including launching missiles, that would make matters worse.

"We would urge North Korea to avoid any steps that increase tension on the peninsula," McCormack said earlier on Thursday.

He said actions by Pyongyang in the last month had not been helpful, but added: "What they have done thus far is reversible. They can take a different set of decisions. We urge them to do so."

The halt to U.N. monitoring throughout the Yongbyon nuclear complex was a significant step toward scrapping the pact to dismantle its atomic bomb program, officials and diplomats said at the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.