North Korea appears almost certain to miss a deadline in a nuclear deal, a development that is unlikely to scuttle the disarmament-for-aid pact it reached with regional powers but could hamper its implementation.
Pyongyang has met one part of the deal by starting to take apart its Soviet-era nuclear facility that produces arms-grade plutonium, but is unlikely to meet its obligation to fully account for its nuclear activities by the end of the year.
US and South Korean officials have called on the North to say how much plutonium it has produced -about 50 kg (110 lb) by US estimates - and answer US suspicions of having a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons.
"We are at a crucial moment," South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told reporters last Friday. South Korea, which is loath to put pressure on the North, is not now thinking of any punishments if the deadline is breached.
North Korea missed a separate deadline, without retributions, earlier this year to freeze its Yongbyon nuclear plant due to a dispute over its international finances. It eventually lived up to its obligations once the row was settled.
North Korea has been co-operating in disabling its three main nuclear facilities - an ageing reactor, a plant that makes nuclear fuel and another one that turns spent fuel into arms-grade plutonium, US and South Korean officials have said.
The process, started in November, is the first tangible action North Korea has made to take apart its nuclear weapons programme since it began its quest for the weapons in earnest in the 1980s. If it lives up to the deal it reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the destitute state would receive 1 million tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid and the US would take it off its terrorism black list.
A uranium enrichment programme could provide North Korea, which has ample supplies of natural uranium, another way to produce fissile material, but experts do not think it has anywhere near a full-scale enrichment programme.
Daniel Pinkston, a specialist on Korean affairs at the International Crisis Group in Seoul said the dispute could grind the disarmament process to a halt, but expects it to merely cause more delays in an already drawn-out process started in 1994 under the Clinton administration.
"The North Koreans are going to want to parse this out," he said. North Korea is facing a shifting political environment that analysts said could make it cautious about moving too quickly. The North saw a drastic change in policy when a Clinton administration that was pushing for better ties was replaced by a Bush team backing a hard-line approach.
The United States elects a new leader in 2008, while South Korea just elected a new president, who pledges to be tougher on Pyongyang, and may install a conservative majority in an April parliamentary vote. The paranoid state also probably loathes the prospect of being forthcoming about one of its biggest secrets, its nuclear weapons programme, analysts said.
Any details it releases on its programme would reveal its skills, or embarrassingly, its lack thereof, of producing nuclear material. It also runs the risk of being criticised if it does meet expectations about plutonium, uranium or proliferation.
North Korea may delay the process, but analysts said it must come up with some sort of declaration. "Failure to do so would be an even bigger mistake, since it would be hard for any administration - in Washington, Seoul, Beijing, or elsewhere - to sustain the current 'action for action' engagement approach toward the North absent Pyongyang's compliance with its own promises," wrote Ralph Cossa, president of the CSIS Pacific Forum think tank.
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