North Korea Nuclear Programme: Pyongyang Hands Over Key Data

North Korea declared an inventory of its nuclear activities today, paving the way for it to be dropped from the United States' terrorism list for the first time in 21 years.

The White House quickly announced that it would lift two sets of sanctions on North Korea. Details of the inventory are yet to be revealed, but under a deal struck last year the US president, George Bush, is now expected to begin moves to remove the country from a State Department list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

Pyongyang has been on the rogue-list since 1986, when North Korean agents planted a bomb on a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people.

US financial sanctions imposed under the Trading With the Enemy Act will also be lifted in 45 days, on condition that international inspectors verify the inventory.

As a visible sign that it is dismantling its program, North Korea will allow dozens of foreign TV companies to film and broadcast the demolition tomorrow of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

Coming half a year after an agreed deadline, the declaration will kick-start stalled six-party talks on the denuclearisation of the peninsular, but tougher tasks lie ahead, including assessing, locating and eliminating North Korea's atomic arsenal in return for economic aid and diplomatic recognition.

"Obviously, the weapons and all the programs are going to have to be dealt with and dismantled if we are to have denuclearisation and it's going to have to be done so verifiably," the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters. "If we can verifiably determine the amount of plutonium that has been made, we then have an upper hand in understanding what may have happened in terms of weaponisation."

The accuracy of the inventory will be assessed over the next 45 days by international inspectors at the Yongbyon plant.

Estimates earlier this year by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security reckoned Pyongyang has between 28-50kg of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for six to 10 bombs.

North Korea joined the nuclear club in October 2006, when it conducted an underground test explosion of a small plutonium bomb.

But the isolated nation has denied US allegations that it is also enriching uranium for a secret nuclear program. Those claims, made by a US diplomat in 2002, led to a tense standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

The two sides have now compromised in sharp contrast to the Bush administration's approach to the other two "axis of evil" nations, Iraq and Iran. This is likely to spark a fierce foreign policy debate in the upcoming US presidential election.