George W. Bush, US president, was on Friday considering a recommendation from his senior officials to remove North Korea from the US terrorism list in spite of Japanese concerns.

The US is considering taking North Korea off the terrorism list after reaching a deal with Pyongyang last week on a mechanism to verify the contents of a nuclear declaration that North Korea provided earlier this year. While the other members of the six-party talks - China, South Korea and Russia - have backed the agreement, Japan has expressed reservations.

Taro Aso, the Japanese prime minister, believes the verification deal is weak, according to a person familiar with the matter. While Washington does not need Japanese approval, consent from Tokyo would help US officials persuade Mr Bush to approve the deal.

A 40-minute phone call between Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, and Hirofumi Nakasone, the Japanese foreign minister, failed to assuage the Japanese concerns. The person said both capitals were in close contact but added that Tokyo did not expect Mr Bush to delist North Korea on Friday.

Mr Aso is concerned that North Korea will not live up to commitments to resolve a longstanding dispute over Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean spies in the 1970s and 1980s, a sensitive issue in Japan.

A US official stressed that while Japan may have reservations about the deal, Tokyo was unlikely to abandon the six-party process as a result.

"The Japanese have a lot of concerns about delisting, not the least of which are the abductees issue and the Liberal Democratic party's political standing," said the US official. "Whatever their concerns, however, I very much doubt that they will want to stand outside of whatever consensus is reached, whenever that consensus is reached."

The official said Washington has told Tokyo that they are more likely to achieve resolution with North Korea over the abductee issue within the framework of the six-party talks.

Washington and Pyong­yang have been locked in a stalemate for months over a verification system that the US insists North Korea must accept to ensure its removal from the US list of state sponsors of terror.

After several days of debate, senior advisers to Mr Bush agreed to recommend that he approve the deal that Mr Hill reached in Pyongyang. One of the Japanese concerns is that the agreement is vague.

While North Korea has returned to the bargaining table, it has also stepped up pressure by expelling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the Yongbyon nuclear facilities complex and threatening to reprocess plutonium for nuclear weapons.

North Korea this week launched two short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea. US intelligence agencies have also detected activity at a nuclear test site that suggests Pyongyang may be preparing for a second nuclear test.