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The United States retained North Korea on the list of terrorism-sponsoring nations but made notable changes in its annual report to encourage the communist regime to change its behavior.

The North Korea segment in the Country Reports on Terrorism was nearly halved in the 2006 version released Monday, deleting much from the Japanese abduction issue.

Also removed were references to South Korean civilians being held since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The report added that Washington and Pyongyang agreed in a six-party pact in February to start the process of removing the North from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The report, issued by the State Department, retained North Korea on the list of state sponsors of terrorism with four other countries -- Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Pyongyang was put on the list in January 1988 after the bombing of a South Korean airliner in November the preceding year by North Korean agents. All 115 people aboard the plane were killed.

As in previous reports, the 2006 version said North Korea was not known to have sponsored any terrorism acts since the airliner bombing.

It also noted, as before, that North Korea still detains four Japanese Red Army members who participated in a jet hijacking in 1970.

But the detailed accounts of North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens were reduced to half in the latest report.

"The Japanese government continued to seek a full accounting of the fate of the 12 Japanese nationals believed to have been abducted by DPRK state entities; five such abductees have been repatriated to Japan since 2002," the report said.

DPRK, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, stands for North Korea's official name.

Last year's version had detailed how many abductees and their family members were allowed to return to Japan and how the issue remains a subject of ongoing negotiations between Pyongyang and Tokyo.

"The issue remained contentious at year's end," the previous report said.

Added was a sentence on the six-nation denuclearization deal of Feb. 13 this year, in which the U.S. agreed to "begin the process" of removing North Korea as a state-sponsor of terrorism.

"Coming off that list is quite a long process," Frank Urbancic, acting coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, said at a briefing.

The issue of Japanese abductees became a focal point in the latest report as Washington's policy shift to engaging North Korea conflicted with Tokyo's hardline stance. Its inclusion in the annual report once again indicates the U.S. considers it an obstacle to removing North Korea from the list of terrorism-sponsoring nations.

But the visibly shortened segment seemed to suggest the U.S. is trying to steer away from making a direct link, something Japan has been concerned about.

While pressing the North to answer to the abductions, the U.S. cut down the language while omitting altogether the mention of South Koreans being held by Pyongyang. The U.S. made it a point of adding the Feb. 13 agreement to the report, although it came after the year covered by the report. The addition was apparently made to reaffirm the U.S. will keep its promise if North Korea meets the necessary conditions. Urbancic acknowledged the inconsistency in the time frame.

"This is technically actually a little out of place since it happened in 2007," he said.

"The discussion of 2007, to be quite frank, is simply to be more complete," he explained.

The U.S. agreed to discuss de-listing North Korea as part of the Feb. 13 deal that commits North Korea to shut down and eventually give up its nuclear weapons and programs. The deadline for Pyongyang's first set of actions was April 14, but the North still refuses to carry them out because of a financial glitch over US$25 million previously frozen by authorities in Macau.

Japan's bilateral talks with North Korea in March on the abduction issue collapsed, and Tokyo demands a full resolution before it will contribute any aid to the North.

Pyongyang persistently demands it be removed from the U.S. terrorism country list which in effect heavily restricts political and economic engagement between the two nations. For instance, the U.S. must oppose any loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions to countries on the list.

Washington, April 30 (Yonhap News)