N Korea hands over nuclear dossier

North Korea handed over details of its nuclear programmes yesterday, clearing the way to be removed from the US terrorism blacklist amid years of efforts to persuade the North to abandon the atom bomb.
Six months behind schedule, officials delivered the dossier to China -- the host country for the six-nation talks since 2003 that have tried to entice the North into exchanging nuclear weapons for aid and diplomatic concessions.
The declaration of the secretive nation's nuclear materials, facilities and programmes was not expected to include a list of its actual atomic weapons, which would come in a later phase of the complex negotiations.
But the provision of the other information -- which will face a rigorous verification programme – marks a key step in efforts to get the North to give up its nuclear weapons, which it has said it needs to deter a US attack.
The US administration of George W Bush, who famously included North Korea in his self-styled "axis of evil," swiftly welcomed the handover but cautioned that Pyongyang had much more to do.
Bush said Thursday he will lift key trade sanctions against North Korea and remove it from the US terrorism blacklist, a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime he once branded as part of an "axis of evil."
"The United States has no illusions about the regime," Bush said in a statement that he read to reporters in the Rose Garden.
"There is still more work to be done in order for North Korea to end its isolation," spokeswoman Dana Perino said, adding that the United States nevertheless would begin work in 45 days to remove its blacklisting of North Korea.
"It must dismantle all of its nuclear facilities, give up its separated plutonium, and resolve outstanding questions on its highly enriched uranium and proliferation activities," she said.
"It must end these activities in a fully verifiable way.”