The North Koreans, like any other blacklisted state, "need to provide the United States with a detailed assurance in key areas that they will not engage in terrorism," US State Department official Dell Dailey told reporters.

"Now that assurance has not come back from the DPRK yet," he said after the release of a State Department report listing North Korea among state sponsors of terrorism along with Iran, Syria, Cuba and Sudan in 2007.

The annual Country Reports on Terrorism listed the same five as state terrorism sponsors in 2006.

Dailey, coordinator of the Office for Counterterrorism, said removing North Korea from the list -- which is part of six-party negotiations to strip Pyongyang of its own nuclear weapons program -- also required a US analysis.

"We have to do a hard and fast intelligence analysis of the previous six months to ensure they haven't conducted any international terrorism," he said.

He had been asked whether North Korea's hopes to be removed from the list would be hurt by US intelligence allegations last week that it helped Syria build a nuclear reactor for a weapons program.

Syria denied the charges it was building such a reactor on a site destroyed by Israel in an air raid last September.

"We're looking very carefully at those (alleged nuclear proliferation) situations with our intelligence analysts, ensuring we've got the right information as to whether those are valid or not," Dailey added.

"We're not certain yet if that is valid information," he said. "Some of it is unfolding as we speak."

US and South Korean envoys here on Monday discussed "next steps" in the six-nation effort aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons drive, but US officials do not expect the charges over proliferation to Syria to disrupt it.

North Korea has shut down its key nuclear reactor and is in the process of disabling it for eventual dismantlement under an aid-for-denuclearization deal with China, South Korea, the United States, Russia, and Japan.

Pyongyang will receive energy aid as well as diplomatic and security guarantees under the deal.

The US says the North Korean declaration must clear up suspicions about an alleged secret uranium enrichment program and the suspected proliferation to Syria.

The North denies both activities. Under a reported tentative deal hammered out in Singapore recently, Pyongyang will merely "acknowledge" US concerns about the two issues in a confidential document to Washington.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.