North Korea Declares Nuclear Inventory

After more than a decade of prodding the regime in North Korea to come clean on its nuclear program, we appear to have finally reached the day of reckoning.

North Korea Thursday handed over its long-awaited nuclear program declaration to officials from China, which led the six-nation talks that hammered out the conditions of the agreement.

The declaration is expected to contain details on North Korea's plutonium stockpile. North Korea will also continue preparations to publicly dismantle a controversial nuclear reactor -- key steps meant to ease international fears about nuclear activities in the Communist nation.

Bush said he will call for the lifting of sanctions against North Korea and move to take it off the terror list. But, he added, North Korea will have to end its nuclear activities in a "verifiable" way.

"The United States has no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang," Bush told reporters. "Yet we welcome today's development as one step of a multi-step process."

"If North Korea continues to make the right choices, it can repair its relationship with the international community," he added. "If North Korea makes the wrong choices, the United States and its partners in the six-party talks will respond accordingly."

Under the agreement, leaders in Pyonyang agreed to provide a full accounting of the plutonium, "acknowledge" concerns about its nuclear proliferation and uranium enrichment activities and agree to continued cooperation with a process to assure that no further activities are

Trust but verify. It worked in the 1980s when dealing with the SALT talks with the former Soviet Union, and it should work here as well.

One has to wonder what comes under the aegis of acknowledge concerns about nuclear proliferation. Does that mean providing details on its nuclear activities in relation to Syria, Iran, Pakistan, or other nations that have been known to seek nuclear weapons? What about missile technologies, which the North Koreans have been providing to just about anyone since that's one of the country's primary exports.

North Korea is set to implode a cooling tower for its nuclear reactor, and the reactor itself is being dismantled.