NORTH KOREA:NORTH KOREA took a major step forward yesterday in shedding its international pariah status when it submitted a long-delayed report about its nuclear activities, prompting a wary welcome from Washington.
Filing the partial declaration should pave the way for the secretive Stalinist enclave to receive foreign aid with the lifting of sanctions.
President Bush said he had begun the process of removing North Korea from the list of states that sponsor terrorism.
However, the report leaves many questions unanswered and, as so often in the long and tortuous process of resolving the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula, is seen as more of a starting point than an end in itself.
President Bush, who once branded North Korea part of his "axis of evil", said Pyongyang faced consequences if it did not fully disclose its operations and continue to dismantle its nuclear programme.
The declaration was initially supposed to be published at the end of last year but the North did not honour the deadline and there followed much diplomatic horse-trading about what it should contain.
In the end, North Korea handed over the report to officials in China, its closest significant ally and host of the six-party talks, which also include South Korea, Russia and Japan.
Publication of the report is likely to lead to a fresh round of six-party talks to discuss the next steps.
The next important moment in the process will be when the North blows up the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear complex today. Crucially, the report is not expected to provide details on nuclear weapons the North may already have produced, its efforts to enrich uranium or help it gave to Syria to build a nuclear plant. The North tested a nuclear device two years ago.
Chris Hill, the main US envoy to nuclear talks with North Korea, said details on the bombs will be left to the next stage of the talks, when Pyongyang is supposed to abandon and dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.
A crucial part of the declaration will be information on how much plutonium Pyongyang has produced at its main reactor facility.
The next step in the disarmament talks will be to verify that claim, through procedures that Mr Hill said would be set up within 45 days.