Provoking the US in its current mood is risky, at best. This time around, nothing less than full and verified nuclear disarmament will satisfy the US. In addition, the US will probably insist on a package deal covering Pyongyang's long list of other threats - chemical and biological warfare and the danger presented by its one million-strong army.

According to analysts, North Korea could be a year or less away from the mass production of nuclear weapons material if it carries out its threat to reactivate a frozen nuclear facility. The North Korean foreign ministry has threatened to resume work "immediately" at the nuclear plant in Yongbyon, which was shut down under an agreement with the US and its allies in 1994.

Beginning work again at the Yongbyon facility could be the start of production of nuclear weapons-grade material on a larger scale.

North Korea has removed security seals and surveillance cameras which the International Atomic Energy Agency was using to monitor the closed facility. But if work started at Yongbyon now, processing could begin in only a few weeks. However, it would take one to two years to produce enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. Analysts point out that North Korea is already thought to have separated plutonium for the plant and stored it away before it was shut down in 1994.

If Yongbyon is used for nuclear weapons production, it only presents a threat to the outside world if North Korea has the capability to launch and deliver nuclear warheads to targets abroad.This also applies to the handful of nuclear bombs which North Korea may have fabricated over the last decade.

In the not to distant past, North Korea showed signs of reaching out to the outside world. However, North Korean diplomats are now seeing those efforts being destroyed. Their nuclear gambit has mixed motives. For certain, North Korea feels threatened by its own weakness and isolation. And in particular by the Bush administration which calls it the "axis of evil."

North Korea says that it needs to reactivate Yongbyon to compensate for the shortfall in energy caused by the move. Sources stressed that the Yongbyon reactor was "tiny" compared to a commercial reactor and therefore would not be capable of significant electrical power generation.