North Korea has said the US is to remove it from its list of countries that sponsor terrorism, a move it has long sought to receive more aid and normalise relations between the two nations.
The US has not confirmed the move, which North Korea says came during weekend talks in Switzerland between the two over its nuclear-weapons programme.
North Korea has already agreed to close its nuclear facilities by the end of 2007.
"In return for this, the US decided to take such political and economic measures for compensation as delisting the DPRK as a terrorism sponsor," a foreign ministry spokesman reportedly said on Monday.
The chief US negotiator to the talks has hinted that Washington could remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism before it completely gives up its nuclear arms programme.
But the US has not said it has decided to strike Pyongyang from the list, which currently also includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
Aid ban
Speaking in the Swiss city of Geneva, Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator, said on Sunday that North Korea had agreed to fully account for and disable its nuclear programme by the end of the year.
He did not say what, if anything, the US had offered in return for the latest pledge.
Pyongyang was put on the US list based on the confession of a North Korean agent over the mid-air explosion of a South Korean passenger jet over the sea off Myanmar in 1987.
The designation imposes a ban on arms-related sales, keeps the economically isolated country from receiving US aid and requires the US to oppose loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions.
The North's spokesman said the Geneva talks had "laid the groundwork for making progress at the plenary session of the six-party talks" aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
North Korea has already shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon under a six-nation agreement reached on February 13.
The talks also involve the US, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.