N.Korea cooperates with US over plutonium programme

Washington: North Korea has agreed to cooperate fully on verifying its nuclear declaration, a US official said on Tuesday as he displayed some of the 18,822 documents Pyongyang has given Washington about its plutonium programme.

Obtaining the documents last week was a victory for the Bush administration, which has struggled to persuade the secretive Communist nation to produce a "complete and correct" declaration of its nuclear programs that was due on December 31.

The declaration is part of a broader multilateral deal under which North Korea, which detonated an atomic device in October 2006, would abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.

The declaration has been held up partly because of Pyongyang's reluctance to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other countries, notably Syria, as well as to account for its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.