North Korea agreed yesterday to give up all of its nuclear weapons and programmes in a landmark agreement that caps two years of negotiations aimed at defusing a high-stakes crisis. In exchange, South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China – the other players in the six-party talks in Beijing – expressed willingness to provide oil and energy aid and security guarantees.

Washington and Tokyo agreed to normalise ties with the impoverished and diplomatically iso- lated North, which pledged to rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “The joint statement is the most important achievement in the two years since the start of six-party talks,” Chinese chief negotiator Wu Dawei said. The seven-day fourth round of talks ended with a standing ovation by all delegates.

Under the terms of the agreement, North Korea would have the right to a civilian nuclear programme if it regains international trust, resolving the main sticking point between Pyongyang and Washington. The United States, backed by Japan, had argued that North Korea could not be trusted with atomic energy, but China, South Korea and Russia supported the position that if it scrapped its nuclear weapons and agreed to strict safeguards it could have such an energy programme in future.

Failure to reach an agreement on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons programmes could have prompted Washington to take the issue to the UN Security Council and press for sanctions. The North had said sanctions would be tantamount to war. North Korea had demanded aid and security guarantees before it dismantled any of its nuclear programmes, but Washington and Tokyo had wanted it to verifiably dismantle first.

<B>“Devil in the detail” </B>

The six parties will hold a fifth round of talks in Beijing in November, but analysts said the issue of whether North Korea can have a light – water reaction was not yet resolved. “The worry is still the issue over whether North Korea can have its own civilian light-water reactor civilian programme. I think the problem is still there. They have just postponed it,” Lai Hongyi, a research fellow of the East Asian Institute in Singapore, told Reuters. Bob Broadfoot, managing director of Political and Economic Risk Consultancy in Hong Kong, said: “I suspect anything they’ve signed is built around a philosophy of ‘show me first. The devil will be in the detail of who’s allowed to go in when to inspect the status of North Korea’s programme. And you can bet there’ll be some controversy around that,” he said.

In yesterday’s agreement, the United States affirmed it had no nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and had no intention to attack or invade North Korea with nuclear or conventional weapons.

Three previous rounds of negotiations failed to resolve the dispute, which started when the United States accused Communist North Korea in 2002 of a nuclear arms programme in violation of international agreements.