TOKYO -- North Korea said Monday it would lift restrictions on U.S. "commodity" imports and on the entry of U.S. merchant shipping into its ports later this month as part of an accord with Washington.


"To implement the framework agreement, the Administration Council of the DPRK (North Korea) has decided to lift from mid-January the restrictions on the import of U.S. commodities, and the ban on the entry of U.S. trading ships into DPRK ports in trade dealings between the DPRK and other countries," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry told the official Korean Central News Agency.


The United States welcomed the move, saying it would be examining its own steps to improve ties with Pyongyang over the next few months.


"We view this as a step that is consistent with the framework agreement to improve ties between the two countries," a senior administration official said late Sunday, after hearing of the decision.


Under the agreement reached last October between Pyongyang and Washington, the countries were to lower barriers between them in trade and investment, including curbs on telecommunications and financial transactions, "within three months of the date of the agreement," the spokesman told Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Tokyo.


The KCNA report did not specify what the "U.S. commodities" were.


The October accord defused a major international crisis that had brought threats of economic sanctions against North Korea and even fears of renewed conflict on the tense Korean peninsula.


The United States and its allies suspected that North Korea had siphoned off nuclear fuel from its one working reactor to try to develop an atomic bomb. Pyongyang bluntly denies the charges.


Relations between the United States and North Korea had improved dramatically following the accord under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear program in return for new nuclear power facilities that would almost eliminate the possibility of it producing weapons-grade plutonium.


But tension ran high again last month when a U.S. military helicopter went down in North Korea after straying across the heavily guarded border with South Korea.