Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea will stay on a U.S. terrorism blacklist until a mechanism is in place to verify its nuclear dossier, the White House said, after the regime said it stopped disabling a reactor to protest a delay in its removal. ``The United States will not take North Korea off the state sponsor of terrorism list until we have a protocol in place to verify the dismantling and accounting for Korea's nuclear program,'' White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday.Kim Jong Il's regime said yesterday it stopped disabling the Yongbyon reactor Aug. 14 after the U.S. failed to lift the terrorism designation, potentially disrupting six-nation talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear-weapons program. The U.S. ``has created a significant stumbling block to resolving the Korean nuclear problem,'' the official Korea Central News Agency said in a statement. ``Since the U.S. has broken its agreement, we must take countermeasures according to the `action-for-action' principle.''
The announcement by North Korea probably amounts to a bargaining tactic, said Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group.
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