N Korea shows off its 'nuclear deterrent'

An unofficial American delegation was on its way home last night after a visit to North Korea during which, the Pyongyang regime said yesterday, it was shown the country's "nuclear deterrent".

John Lewis, a retired professor of international relations at Stanford University, who led the five-member delegation, confirmed that they had visited the Yongbyon nuclear complex, but refused to give more details until they had briefed the US government. They were the first outsiders to see Yongbyon - where it is suspected North Korea has produced enriched uranium - since UN inspectors were expelled a year ago.

Washington believes the North Koreans have nuclear weapons, something Kim Jong Il's secretive regime has always refused to confirm or deny. But yesterday the official news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying: "As everybody knows, the United States compelled [North Korea] to build a nuclear deterrent. We showed this to Lewis and his party."

Last week, North Korea said it would freeze its nuclear programme in exchange for US economic aid and its removal from Washington's list of countries which sponsor terrorism. But it warned that the US was "hallucinating" if it expected it to "do a Libya" and give up its weapons of mass destruction. Peace, noted the reclusive Communist regime, "is defended only by strength".

By North Korea's belligerent standards this is quite conciliatory, however, and will be presented by the Bush administration as one of a string of apparent victories in its campaign to bring rogue states to heel. Though the long-term impact for efforts to control weapons proliferation is unclear, neo-conservative hardliners in Washington say recent events prove the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action, and its application against Saddam Hussein, is working as advertised.

Libya, which before Christmas made its stunning announcement that it would give up efforts to build nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, last week took another step out of the doghouse by signing a $170m compensation agreement with France over the 1989 downing of a UTA jetliner over the Sahara. Simultaneously it emerged that representatives of Muammar Gaddafi held secret meetings with Israeli officials late last year - an astonishing sign of how parts of the Middle East landscape may be reshaped by the war in Iraq.

Iran, Iraq's eastern neighbour and fellow founder member of the "axis of evil", has also been edging back towards respectability. First it agreed to submit its suspected nuclear plants to unscheduled UN inspections, before announcing last week that it was restoring diplomatic relations with Egypt, a key US ally in the region.

Even Syria, another "bad boy", may be seeking to find a way back into Washington and the West's graces, as its President Bashar Assad paid his first visit to Turkey, an important US ally which is also on good terms with Israel. For administration hawks, this too is proof that Syria has finally got the message.

Pakistan - regarded as the biggest proliferation threat of all - has promised to bar exports of nuclear equipment and technology. To Washington's satisfaction, it has also embarked on a rapprochement with its old enemy, India. For the first time, the hitherto intractable issue of Kashmir will be discussed in bilateral talks later this year.

All this has even more cautious members of the Bush administration, such as Colin Powell, believing that something is afoot: "We enter 2004 in an interesting arrangement, if I may use that word," the Secretary of State remarked last week. "A lot of things happened over the last few months." But whether good intentions will be matched by deeds is another matter.

The paramount worry is Pakistan, believed to be a nuclear supplier to Iran, Libya and North Korea. General Pervez Musharraf is hailed by President Bush as a vital ally in the war on terror, and US officials are all too aware that if they push too hard, they may provoke his downfall. Radical Islamic groups failed in two assassination bids in the last month; if a third succeeded, it could pave the way for an Islamic regime with a working "Islamic bomb" - exactly the result the US anti-proliferation effort seeks to avoid.