President Bush, who once branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," welcomed the move and said he intends to remove the communist nation from the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism.
"The declaration says: 'We are not now engaged in any [uranium] enrichment activities or [nuclear] proliferation activities and will not engage in them in the future,'" U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said in Washington.
"It is a good first step in getting the kind of disclosure and transparency into North Korea's nuclear activities as part of and a step toward their disablement, dismantlement and termination of those activities," Hadley said.
North Korea handed over the declaration to officials from China, which led the six-nation talks that hammered out the conditions of the agreement. In addition to China and the United States, the talks included South Korea, Japan and Russia.