Real test looms for N Korea

BBC

North Korea has missed another nuclear deadline.

Under a deal reached in February 2007, the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-il had agreed to do two things by December 31: disable its Yongbyon reactor site, and provide a full declaration of all its nuclear activities.

But the year ended with work still incomplete at Yongbyon - and stony silence from Pyongyang.

The two Ds are different. Yongbyon was already closed down since July, and the US team supervising its disabling reported full local cooperation.

North Korea has evidently decided to sacrifice these ageing facilities - a cause of concern for almost 20 years - now that they have done their job and given Kim the bomb, as seen in October 2006's small nuclear test.

Deja vu is unavoidable. Under the Clinton-era 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework, Yongbyon was sealed - but not disabled - until late 2002, when the Bush administration accused North Korea of running a separate covert nuclear programme based on highly enriched uranium (HEU).

In an escalating row, North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and restarted the site, producing more plutonium and so enabling 2006's nuclear test........