SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Sunday it will resume disabling its key nuclear complex after the United States dropped the country from a terrorism blacklist -- a breakthrough expected to energize stalled talks aimed at ending the country's atomic ambitions.

The spat was the latest of many between Pyongyang and Washington that threatened to scuttle progress before eventually being settled since the international talks aimed at dismantling the communist country's nuclear program began five years ago.

This weekend's developments raised hope that stalled international nuclear talks could quickly resume and help improve ties between Washington and Pyongyang -- Cold War adversaries, still technically at war.

Experts still predict a long, bumpy road ahead before North Korea's nuclear program is dismantled.

The next stage ''will be more complicated,'' said Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute, a private security think tank near Seoul.

Cheong said Pyongyang could ask for increasingly difficult concessions like the normalization of diplomatic ties with the United States and the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea before it completely dismantled its plutonium-processing facility at Yongbyon.

U.S. officials had insisted that they would not take the North off the list of terrorism sponsors unless it accepted a thorough inspection of its nuclear program under an international agreement signed by North Korea, the United States and four other countries. The U.S. stance prompted the North to start to reassemble the facilities at Yongbyon and bar international monitors from the site.

OFF THE LIST

On Saturday, however, Washington announced that it was taking the North off the list -- which still includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- saying that Pyongyang had accepted all of its nuclear inspection demands.

Hours later, North Korea's Foreign Ministry announced that the country would restart disabling work and again allow U.S. and U.N. inspections at Yongbyon.

U.S. officials warned that North Korea could again be placed on the blacklist if it ended up not allowing the inspections.

North Korea, for its part, said prospects for disarmament depend on whether the U.S. delisting actually takes effect and Pyongyang receives the remaining international aid promised under a 2007 deal reached with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

Under that agreement, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear programs in return for diplomatic concessions and the equivalent of one million tons of oil aid. North Korea has complained that it completed eight out of 11 key disablement procedures, but has received only half of the promised aid.

ISSUE OF VERIFICATION

''The terrorism delisting is just one step in getting the North to abandon its nuclear program,'' said Kang Sung-yoon, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University. ``I think we'll face tiresome discussions on how to proceed with the verification.''

Other developments have also sowed doubts about whether North Korea will follow through on its disarmament pledge -- among them, the upcoming U.S. election that will bring a new president in January and questions about the health of leader Kim Jong Il. Although Kim reportedly suffered a stroke in August, North Korean media Saturday published photos of him inspecting a military unit.

The United States put North Korea on its terrorism list after communist agents allegedly planted a bomb on a South Korean commercial jetliner in 1987, killing all 115 people aboard. The North has denied involvement.

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