US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill told the North Koreans at a Geneva meeting at the weekend that there were only a few more issues that needed to be resolved before Pyongyang's removal from the blacklist, the official said Tuesday.

"My understanding is that he made it pretty clear to them that the remaining issues -- at least on the terrorism list piece of this -- are not that extensive," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said the outstanding issues included North Korea's explanation over its alleged involvement in the 1987 midair bombing of Korean Airlines Flight 858, which killed all 115 people aboard.

"What I also am trying to get away from is the notion that this is purely going to be, 'we just decide we are going to do it and they don't have to answer the questions about (the KAL issue) and couple of other things that got them on the list in the first place," the official said.

The State Department says in its website that North Korea, designated in January, 1988 as a state sponsor of terrorism, "is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987."

But it noted that the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea remained an unresolved and "contentious" issue. It also said that four Japanese Red Army members remained in North Korea after being linked to a jet hijacking in 1970.

Tom Casey, a US State Department spokesman, said US government departments were working on a process to prepare for any eventual removal of North Korea from the terror list.

"I know there have been discussions about this," said Casey, though he declined to elaborate in detail. "Obviously, they involve a variety of different government agencies."

Casey said that there were a series of legal standards, both for getting on and off the US terror list, adding that US laws and regulations had to be fully met before Pyongyang was removed from the list.

He hinted that any mechanism or timing for such removal could be discussed under a six-nation meeting among nuclear envoys expected this month in Beijing.

North Korean state media reported Monday that the United States had agreed to strike Pyongyang from its blacklist of states that sponsor terrorism during Hill's talks in Geneva with his Pyongyang counterpart Kim Kye Gwan.

This claim was swiftly denied by the US side. Hill said Tuesday that a delisting depended on further steps towards denuclearization.

But Kim reportedly insisted Tuesday that Washington promised to remove North Korea from the blacklist.

"Something has already been promised," Kim said when asked if Washington would remove Pyongyang from the list as he flew out of Geneva after the talks, according to Japan's Jiji Press. "I do not feel this is new."

Following its decision to shut down its key nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in July, Pyongyang agreed at a US-North Korea bilateral working group meeting in Geneva to disable its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, Hill said.

The working group was among several set up under an ambitious six-nation February accord that envisages the lifting of US sanctions on North Korea, normalized relations with the United States and Japan and major economic aid if the North declares and disables "all existing nuclear facilities."

Weapons are not specifically mentioned, even though the North tested its first atomic bomb last October.

The other four countries aside from North Korea on the US state sponsors of terrorism list are Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan.

The last country to have been removed from the list was Libya. But it took about two and a half years for Libya to be taken off the list after its leader Moamer Kadhafi renounced its non-conventional weapons program in December 2003.

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