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North Korea said Wednesday it would suspend its nuclear weapons tests and allow the return of UN inspectors in a deal that includes US food aid, marking a potential breakthrough after years of tension.

In an agreement just two months after the death of longtime leader Kim Jong-Il, North Korea and the United States announced that Pyongyang would suspend its uranium enrichment programme and halt nuclear and missile tests.

"Today's announcement represents a modest first step in the right direction," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said as she testified before a Senate committee in Washington.

"We of course will be watching closely and judging North Korea's new leaders by their actions," she said.

The deal followed talks in Beijing last week between the two sides, the first dialogue since Kim's young and untested son Kim Jong-Un took power.

The United States said it would provide 240,000 tonnes of "nutritional assistance" to North Korea. A US official said that Washington rejected a request for rice and grains and instead would provide vegetable oil, pulses and ready-to-eat meals designed for young children and pregnant women.

"These are people whom the regime either cannot or has chosen not to feed," the senior official said in Washington on condition of anonymity.

The North said it would allow the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment. The North -- which is suspected of supplying equipment, materials and know-how to Syria and Libya -- kicked out inspectors in 2009.

In Vienna, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano welcomed the announcement as "an important step forward" and said that the agency was ready to return.

The deal was also welcomed by Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba in Japan, one of six countries in talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons that also include China, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.

The Beijing discussions were aimed at persuading the North to return to the six-nation talks which it abandoned in April 2009. It staged its second atomic weapons test a month later, following the first in 2006.

North Korea first disclosed its uranium enrichment programme in November 2010, potentially giving the communist state a second way to make atomic weapons.

North Korea also has a longstanding plutonium programme that is believed to have produced enough material for six to eight atomic weapons.

The North said the US side offered to discuss the lifting of sanctions and provision of light-water reactors to generate electricity as a priority, once the long-stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks resume.

In a statement, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that US sanctions "are not targetted against the livelihood" of the North Korean people.

"The United States reaffirms that it does not have hostile intent toward the DPRK and is prepared to take steps to improve our bilateral relationship in the spirit of mutual respect for sovereignty and equality," Nuland said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The United States and North Korea reaffirmed their commitment to a September 2005 six-nation deal. This envisaged the North scrapping its nuclear programmes in return for major diplomatic and economic benefits and for a peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War.

Pyongyang, in a statement on its official news agency, said both sides recognised the armistice which ended the war as "the cornerstone of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula until the conclusion of a peace treaty".

There were widespread reports in December that the two sides were close to such a deal, but the sudden death of Kim Jong-Il threw the process into uncertainty.

The new leadership headed by Jong-Un has taken a generally tough tone with the United States and South Korea, blasting joint military exercises which started on Monday as a rehearsal for war.

The US statement did not directly address tensions with US-allied South Korea. The United States has previously demanded that the North repair ties with the South before any progress between Washington and Pyongyang.

Nuland's statement said that the United States "still has profound concerns regarding North Korea's behaviour" but that the agreement reflects "important, if limited, progress in addressing some of these."

Washington-based North Korea expert L. Gordon Flake said the United States was eager for a cooling of tensions with North Korea before elections in November.

"In the context of a political year in Washington, the worst thing we could have when dealing with ongoing events in Syria and elsewhere is for North Korea to flare up," said Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation.

US President Barack Obama faced immediate criticism by several lawmakers from the rival Republican Party over the agreement.

Jon Kyl, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, said he was "deeply disappointed" and accused the administration of reneging on repeated promises not to link humanitarian assistance to the nuclear issue.