An international daily says the United States is likely to have made key concessions in getting North Korea to agree to report and disable all its nuclear programs and facilities by late this year.

The Christian Science Monitor quoted Wednesday a report by the North’s Korean Central News Agency that said Washington agreed during talks in Geneva to take Pyongyang off the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring countries and to provide political and economic "compensation" in the form of removal of sanctions.

The State Department refrained from immediate comment on the North Korean report.

However, The Christian Science Monitor was quick to add that analysts are confident that the weekend talks in Geneva between top U.S. nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-kwan, revolved around those issues.

According to the daily, the North could be de-listed since it has not been involved in any terrorist activities in the past six months.

However, the report was quick to add that a decision to remove Pyongyang from the list is certain to provoke controversy since the communist state has never acknowledged the act that got it on the list in the first place ­ the 1987 bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 that killed all one hundred-15 passengers and crew members on board.