Norks turn over nuke data

AP/IHT:

North Korea turned over key nuclear weapons documents to a visiting U.S. diplomat Thursday, a senior State Department official said. It was a step toward the Bush administration's goal of a full accounting of the isolated regime's nuclear past.

The official told The Associated Press that the North handed over the records in the capital Pyongyang. The diplomat is to carry them to South Korea later this week. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the outcome of confidential meetings between U.S. envoy Sung Kim and the government of Kim Jong Il.

The documents are detailed technical logs from North Korea's shuttered plutonium reactor. The records will give the U.S. and other outsiders a way to, in effect, check North Korea's mathematics if it finally produces a long-overdue summary of its weapons program.

"They are an important element in the verification of a declaration which will include figures for the amount of plutonium they have produced," the State Department official said. "These documents would help verify those figures are correct."

The paperwork could also build confidence among conservative critics of the recent, relatively flexible U.S. posture toward North Korea, an isolated dictatorship President George W. Bush once termed part of an "axis of evil." The Bush administration is pursuing a comprehensive disarmament deal with the North that requires some congressional approval, and is lobbying to counter criticism that it is giving away the store.

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The real question is what took them so long. Were they short of copy machines? This is typical of their grudging compliance at best with agreements. Hopefully it is real progress this time.