N Korea will have do a lot for removal from terror list: Bush

Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington, Aug 6 (PTI) North Korea has "got a lot to do"
before being finally removed from the U.S. terrorism
blacklist, President George W. Bush asserted Wednesday, but
said a "step-by-step" process is being put in place in this
direction.

At the same time, he voiced concern about the Communist
nation's rights record and said a determination is yet to be
made whether it has made the transition out of the so-called
"axis of evil," a terminology coined by his administration.

Pyongyang expects Bush to remove it from the U.S. list of
terror-sponsoring nations as soon as next weekend, as promised
when it blew up its nuclear reactor cooling tower in June.

Bush, at a press conference in Seoul with South Korean
President Lee Myung-bak, said the North must first agree to
international terms for verifying its dismantlement efforts.

"The 12th (of August) is the first opportunity where they
may be lifted off the list. And, yes, they got a lot to do.
They got to, like, show us a verification regime that we can
trust. This is a step-by-step process," Bush said, according
to a transcript released by the White House here.

"I don't know whether or not they're going to give up
their weapons. I really don't know. I don't think either of us
knows. I know this: that the six-party talks is the best way
to convince them to give up their weapons."

He said "part of the step-by-step was to say, OK, if you
do the following things like you said you would do, you get
off the terrorist list. That could conceivably happen, as you
mentioned, on the 12th. However, it's going to require action
on the leader of North Korea's part. It just doesn't
automatically happen"

Bush welcomed the North's moves to disable its Yongbyon
atomic complex but said it has many more obligations under the
six-party deal.

He said the message to the North's leader Kim Jong-Il
was: "You have a choice to make. You can verifiably do what
you say you're going to do or you continue to be the most
sanctioned regime in the world."

"That's to be determined," Bush replied when asked if
North Korea has fundamentally changed from being a member of
the "axis of evil."

"The human rights abuses inside the country still exist
and persist. The North Korean leader has yet to fully verify
the extent to which he has had a highly enriched uranium
programme."

To get off the "axis of evil" list, the North Korean
leader "is going to have to make certain decisions," he said.