Weapons Inspections

North Korea said Sunday that it was resuming the dismantlement of its nuclear program in response to President Bush's decision to remove it from a list of nations that sponsor terrorism. The decision means that U.N. nuclear inspectors, who were barred last month from entering the nuclear facilities but not kicked out of the country, can resume their jobs immediately at Yongbyon, North Korea's main nuclear compound.

North Korea's unexpected promise last month to open its nuclear weapons arsenals and production facilities to U.N. inspectors provided a welcome foreign policy success for the White House, but may prove embarrassing as well. At stake is whether the Bush administration overstated a purported secret North Korean program to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs in 2002.

North Korea's top nuclear negotiator told a visiting American delegation today that his government would immediately invite United Nations nuclear inspectors into the country if $25 million in disputed funds were released to Pyongyang. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan met with Bill Richardson, a Democratic Party presidential candidate, and Anthony Principi, President Bush's former veteran affairs secretary, who were visiting Pyongyang, the capital.

After months of stalled negotiations, international efforts to disarm North Korea of nuclear weapons abruptly shifted into high gear Friday as U.N. inspectors prepared to visit and a senior U.S. diplomat said he had been "buoyed" by his surprise visit to Pyongyang. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S.

The Bush administration's good-cop strategy toward North Korea appears to have paid off for now, with the communist regime promising to meet with United Nations weapons inspectors today as a first step toward decommissioning its nuclear reactor. Still, nearly everyone who has closely followed the protracted effort says it's far too early to assume the United States and other nations will succeed in peacefully persuading North Korea to give up its membership in the nuclear club.

U.N. inspectors headed to North Korea's key nuclear reactor today for the first time since 2002 to discuss plans to shut the plutonium-producing facility under an international accord. Olli Heinonen, deputy director general of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, said his team would tour the Yongbyon facility, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital, and discuss arrangements for verification of the reactor shutdown and monitoring.

The Security Council on Friday shut down the weapons inspection program that was at the heart of the U.N.'s effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The team of inspectors, known as the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, did not find the weapons that the U.S. and Britain said had been stockpiled by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The two nations' insistence that such weapons posed an imminent danger was the basis of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The U.S.

Iran's decision to grant international inspectors greater access to a major nuclear facility was greeted Friday with skepticism as well as cautious hope among nonproliferation experts. Under an agreement announced Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency again will be granted access to the heavy water reactor at Arak by the end of the month. The U.N. watchdog's inspectors were barred this year from the remote facility in the mountains of western Iran.

Russia suspended participation Saturday in a key European arms control treaty, saying it would no longer allow NATO inspections of its military sites nor limit the numbers of its tanks and other heavy conventional weapons. The move, which Russia had threatened for months, added new tension to relations with the West already strained over U.S. plans to build a missile shield system in Eastern Europe, Russian conflicts with its neighbors and Western criticism of Moscow's human rights record.

Iran continues to expand its ability to enrich uranium, but is operating far below capacity and cooperating more fully in clearing up questions about its efforts, a U.N. report said Thursday. According to the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran operates 1,968 centrifuges for producing enriched uranium that could ultimately be used to make nuclear weapons or generate electricity, a 50% increase over the number it had on line in April.