WASHINGTON—North Korea will soon produce a long-overdue declaration of its nuclear programs, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.
"North Korea will soon give its declaration of nuclear programs to China," Rice said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation think tank as she gave a broad defense of the Bush administration's policy toward the isolated communist state.
North Korea was due to produce the declaration by the end of 2007 under a broader multilateral agreement in which it committed to abandoning all of its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.
China is the host of the so-called six-party talks, which include the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States and produced the September 2005 multilateral agreement.
Once North Korea has made the declaration, President George W. Bush would notify Congress of his intention to remove North Korea from the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list and to cease to sanction it under the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, Rice said.
"In the next 45 days after that, before those actions go into effect, we would continue to assess the level of North Korean cooperation in helping to verify the accuracy and completeness of its declaration," she said. "And if that cooperation is insufficient, we will respond accordingly."
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